How to Deal with Unmet Expectations Around the Holidays

How to Deal with Unmet Expectations Around the Holidays

We’ve all had to deal with unmet expectations – in big and daily life circumstances. We had a picture in our mind of what our life would look like in a particular season, and it hasn’t turned out the way we hoped it might. There are days we wake up with an agenda in mind, and nothing goes as planned; we then end up disappointed. We expect a friend will be there somehow, but they end up letting us down. Maybe you have unmet expectations in your marriage or relationship with your children. There can be countless ways in which we experience disappointment when we experience unmet expectations.

It is ingrained within our human nature to set our hope in what we see around us and grab onto an ideal that might be presented to us on a regular basis in our culture or the church. Our lives, relationships, and daily life are supposed to unfold in a certain way. We want to settle into the familiar and live in the comfortable and the predictable. But that just isn’t how life is, is it? As soon as sin entered the world, everything was altered in every way, and now everything is harder than God ever intended it to be.

Unmet Expectations Around the Holidays

We have officially entered the holiday season, and if you are like me, you have memories of past years or visions of what things are supposed to look like. It’s easy to enter this season and to place our hope and expectation in ideals, people, or events as if we can somehow push a pause button, and life will magically and suddenly begin to look like what we imagine it should, just because it is the holiday season.

It’s crucial that we, as believers in Jesus, prepare our hearts to fight the battles that we face in our culture and hearts during this season. We need to enter this season with our minds saturated with the truth of God’s Word and prayerfully move through each day in a way that glorifies God, placing our hope in Him alone.

As I think through this battle we face of having expectations, Psalm 62: 5-8 comes to mind:

“My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defense; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God. Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah”.

In these verses, we see David has placed his confidence in God and pleading with others to do the same. A calm and quietness is present because he has fixed his eyes on Jesus. (“…I will not be moved.”) He is not upset or discouraged because he trusts in God and has placed his hope in the “the unshakable, firm, steady, reliable nature of God as an anchor point for faith.”

David then compares God to a solid rock and a fortress. Solid rock can create a firm foundation and serve as a thick wall to provide safety and security. David is trusting God to keep him safe and stable when faced with danger; in the same way, one might find safety within the rock-solid walls of a strong fortress. He trusts that God is sovereign and central to everything in his life. David calls on the “people” (Israel, plus you and me) to see his example of relying entirely on God and trusting him, encouraging them to follow it. In the same way that he finds calm and confidence in God, he encourages us to find it as well.

At the end of these verses, he says, “pour out your heart before him…” As one author stated, “The Hebrew phrase translated as "pour out your heart" implies total surrender to the Lord with one's deepest, most inner self. This implies transparency before a God who already knows our hearts better than we do. Trust in God should be consistent, in good and troublesome circumstances, in times of plenty and those of need”.

Friend, we can surrender our lives and our days to God, along with our deepest desires that He is already aware of, and have confidence that we will never be disappointed. If we choose to say, “…my expectation is from Him.” We can experience calm and confidence, no matter what our life and our days end up looking like because we know He is in control and can be trusted.

But we must fix our eyes on Jesus.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul encourages us to run the race with our eyes on the prize. He sets his face like flint to finish his race. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.”

We must fix our eyes on Jesus.

In Philippians 3, Paul says, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

We must fix our eyes on Jesus.

And Hebrews 12 gives us an example of what we need to focus on: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

We must fix our eyes on Jesus.

Today and every day, in every circumstance, He is the One we need to focus on and place our hopes (expectations) in. When we do this, we will not be disappointed.

But what do we do when we are working to fix our eyes on Jesus, but we end up feeling the sting of being let down in some way because of circumstances that are out of our control and are hurtful? What do we do when we find ourselves feeling disappointed with how life has turned out? What do we do when something happens during this holiday season that is less than ideal?

We fix our eyes on Jesus.

2 Corinthians 1:3,4 says this, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."

When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we not only find a Savior who can be trusted, but one who is the “Father of compassion and the God of all comfort…” As believers, we can have a calm confidence because He is our refuge, but we can also be confident that we will always be met with compassion and comfort.

We serve a Savior who lowered himself to come to earth for the purpose of giving His life by being hung on a cross. This is the Jesus we are fixing our eyes on. Because of His death, we have been gifted a life where we can experience blessing and growth when we experience unmet expectations.

How does that work? 

Disappointment and unmet expectations can be used as a platform for us to get to know Jesus better!

The Gospel in a Nutshell

-All of creation is under the curse of sin, and the result is death and eternal separation from God. God has given a lost and dying world good news: the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

-The Gospel is the good news that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1

-God loved the world and gave His only Son to die for our sin. John 3:16

-Jesus Christ came into the world in human flesh to be the perfect sacrifice for sin and to make atonement, or “propitiation for the sins of the people.” Hebrews 2:17

-Our salvation, eternal life, and home in Heaven are guaranteed because of Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection. 1 Peter 1:3-4; John 14:1-4.

-We can’t earn our salvation. God has purchased our freedom; we can do nothing to merit His forgiveness.

-We are no longer in bondage to sin. God declares the believer to be not guilty before God and therefore treated as holy. John 19:30; 1 John 2:2.-We were once enemies of God but have been reconciled by the blood of Christ and adopted into the family of God Romans 5:10; John 1:12; 1 John 3:1

No matter what this season holds, we can have hope because of the gospel. No matter what our life and days hold, we can have confidence in Jesus and find hope in Him – and we will never be disappointed.

Fix your eyes on Jesus.

Photo credit: ©GettyImages/Kerkez
Gina Smith is a writer and author. She has been married for 35 years to Brian, a college professor and athletic trainer. For 25+ years, she and her husband served on a Christian college campus as the on-campus parents, where Brian was a professor and dean of students. They reside right outside of Washington, DC, and are the parents of two grown children, one daughter-in-law, one son-in-law, and one granddaughter. She recently authored her first traditionally published book, Everyday Prayers for Joy, which is available everywhere books are sold. You can find Gina at the following: Website: ginalsmith.com, Instagram, and at Million Praying Moms, where she is a writer.