Expectations can crush us. In the fall of 2013 they were crushing me. I was a man in need of a constant supply of R-O-L-A-I-D-S…Rolaids. (If you aren’t sure what I mean by this, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG8skQICTBA) I was searching for relief in all the wrong places.

That fall, I went to a “Men at the Cross” Weekend with Matt Cobb, Jason Cobb, Richard Jackson and Brian Byers. I was unsure of what to expect, and was pretty certain after the first session that I didn’t want to be there. The call at that point in the weekend was trust the process. So, I kept saying that to my self …trust the process…trust the process…trust the process. At one point early in the weekend they asked us to spend some time alone with the Lord, to pray and ask God to lead us toward what He wanted to show us and teach us…where did we need to live in the truth? As I prayed and looked at the Scripture, the thing that bubbled to the surface was expectations.

Expectations…I had recently become the pastor of Crossroads, experiencing the pains of a re-plant of an established church. My family was young and active. We were in the middle of transitions of home schooling. We were also deciding about whether to buy the house we had been living in and leasing to purchase. I was trying for the umpteenth time to get into shape. People needed things from me, like a lot. Expectations. I felt like Billy Joel in the song Pressure:

"I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale/ But here you are with your faith/ And your Peter Pan advice/ You have no scars on your face/ And you cannot handle/ Pressure…Pressure…Pressure"

The pulsing…pressures…tension…expectations and no relief. And the worst part of this was not the external expectations, but the internal ones. You know the nagging ones that continue to say; “you know…what about this, and this, and this.” The sneaking suspicion that I am not enough. It was noise…constant noise…noise within and noise without. And I wanted all that noise, because I wanted to say I think I can control everything. But the noise was strangling me.

My marriage was part of this. Not a central part, but a part… in the expectations that I had and, those that Danette had for me. The failures of being present, failures of feeling all the things I wanted to feel and doing all the things I wanted to do, the failures of Danette doing all the things I wanted her to do. Marriage is not always being present to each other. We fail. We don’t meet expectations, whether those expectations are from our spouse or from us. And the difficult part for us is that we both want to be rid of the expectations, and yet we want to have the expectations, because they give us this sense of control. We are juggling things and constantly switching stations…noise, expectations. How do we occupy this huge ginormous space of until death do us part?

That weekend was the beginning of experiencing relief. That's what we need. Often we look for that relief in the wrong places. We run to our spouse and ask them to provide it, or our kids, or our job, or our well-manicured lawn, or next home project…but they all fail to provide significant relief, and they can’t stop the internal noises. God’s grace meets us in these places—where it feels like we are beyond His reach in the noise and expectations of life that are crushing us, and it brings relief. It met me that weekend. First by making me aware, allowing me to honestly confess my sins of control and withdraw, and second by bringing in processes and relationships to help deal with the noise, and third by reminding me that God’s love because of Jesus’ work on the cross brings acceptance and a better word than the noise of expectations. It says, “I am enough.” You don’t have to be…because I am. God is enough for us. He is enough for us when our spouse, our kids, our friends fail to meet our expectations. He is enough for us when we fail to meet our own expectations. Because of the person and work of Jesus, there can be relief.