Anticipation

I’m writing early this week.  By the time this publishes on Tuesday morning, we will have the keys to our new home and will be painting like crazy people.  I feel like a little girl waiting for Christmas… the anticipation is killing me!! 

I have been to the home improvement stores over and over trying to pick new paint colors and fixtures that I would like to change out in the house.  We have been furniture shopping so that (a) will be all ready to move into a “big boy” room.  I have friends ready to come over and help with design ideas and minor remodels.  The utilities are set to be changed to our names, and the cars are packed with the cleaning supplies (and toilet paper!) that need to move in first.  We have worked hard to be ready and now we anxiously wait until the keys are in our hands. 

Paint color samples all ready to go!

Car loaded down with things ready to move in!!

It has made it easier to jump out of bed the last few mornings because I am so excited to keep preparing for our house projects. And all that has made me think… why don’t I look at more of life with anticipation?  So many days I wake up with the stress of just “surviving” the day’s to-do list.  Right now I am still working from a to-do list, actually a rather long one, but the difference is the attitude with which I approach that list.  I can’t wait to choose colors, I can’t wait to change out light fixtures, I can’t wait to unpack boxes and hang pictures.  But many days I think, I HAVE to do laundry, I HAVE to get groceries, I HAVE to run errands.  What would happen if I was willing to approach my life with more of the anticipation I have now?  I know that attitude is contagious… what would my classroom look like each day if my students and I all came with the attitude “I can’t wait to get to school!”? How much more would (a) and (A) help me around the house if I had the anticipation of “I can’t wait to do chores!”?  I know it sounds silly, and a bit “Polly Anna” to approach the day to day this way, but I would much rather live with anticipation than dread.

I also wonder, what would I see God do in my life if I was willing to approach my FAITH with anticipation… the exciting expectation that something is going to happen… more often?  I believe God is willing to do great things, huge things, with my life… but all too often I just don’t ask for them, or I simply don’t anticipate they could ever happen.  I want to start praying with anticipation- KNOWING God is going to work in amazing ways.  I want to start living with anticipation that I am going to see God do immeasurably more than I ever imagined for myself. 

(A) has been preaching through a sermon series on Audacious Faith, which has also led me to a new devotional 100 Days to Brave by Annie Downs.  Through both of these studies I have been taking a closer look at many great “heroes” of faith, and I realize something.  They aren’t extraordinary PEOPLE, they just had the extraordinary FAITH to truly ANTICIPATE what God was going to do through them.  Joshua anticipated that God could make the sun stand still on his behalf, Elijah anticipated God would send down fire from heaven on a wet alter at Mt. Carmel, David anticipated God would use a stone to bring down a giant, and those are just a few of so many examples.  I believe God is still in the business of doing extraordinary things through ordinary people, and it is time I live in anticipation of that. 

I also am choosing to pray with anticipation as well, so I will admit that as we set up the new house this week, we are choosing to set up a nursery.  NO, I’m not pregnant, but we have prayed that we will one day be blessed with more babies, and we are choosing to live in anticipation that it will happen.  It is just some furniture, and it just one of MANY areas in my life where I hope to see God work, but it is a small step toward a life of exciting expectation of what God is able to do… and I will wait, and live, and pray with anticipation.     

“ Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us— to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”  Ephesians 3:20-21