Turning Your Nouns into Verbs

One of my favorite chapters in The Shack by Wm. Paul Young is #14 - 'Verbs and Other Freedoms'.  Today we are going to look at the seemingly harmless word Expectation.  Young says:

Before your words became nouns, they were words, nouns with movement and experience buried inside of them; the ability to respond and expectancy.  My words are alive and dynamic - full of life and possibility; yours are dead, full of law and fear of judgment...

...If you and I are friends, there is an expectancy that exists within our relationship.  When we see each other after being apart, there is expectancy of being together, laughing, and talking.  The expectancy has no concrete definition; it is alive and dynamic...everything that emerges from our being together is a unique gift shared by no one else.  But what happens if I change that 'expectancy' to an 'expectation' - spoken or unspoken?  Suddenly, the law has entered into our relationship.  You are now expected to perform in a way that meets my expectations...It is no longer about you and me, but about what friends are supposed to do, or the responsibilities of a good friend.

 I still read that and say WOW!  I can look back at most of the disappointing times in my life and realize that instead of using my verb, I became firmly grounded in my noun.  Moving from expectancy (anticipation, excitement, unknown adventure) to expectation (THIS is how it will end, THIS is how I will feel, THIS is how people will respond).  And it is equally applied to all the amazing memories my heart can hold - when there were no plans (OCD, Type A, Organizer

Extraordinaire) or perceived outcomes (Going with the flow - I can do this, I can do this) - and it turned out to be better than I could ever have imagined!

When I logged into YouVersion and searched Expectation, I found myself reading through two pages of verses, both Old and New Testaments (NASB) talk about that pesky little noun:

*Job 30:26 - When I expected good, then evil came;
*Job 41:9 - Behold, your expectation is false;
*Isaiah 5:4 - "What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones?
*Isaiah 64:3 - When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence (Love the word 'awesome', love the magnitude of Him exceeding expectations - I am fond of this one!)
*Matthew 24:50 - the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know,
*Luke 6:34, 35 - If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount.  But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.
*Acts 3:5 - And he began to give them is attention, expecting to receive something from them.
*Acts 28:6 - But they were expecting that he was about to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had waited a long time and had seen nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.
*2 Corinthians 8:5 - and this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God.
*James 1:7 - For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord.

So when we put an expectation on something, we are presuming its inevitability.  We are assigning a fixed outcome, to something that has yet to be settled, and depending on the ending, it will either meet, ecstatically exceed, or fall dangerously low of our noun.  I place expectations on a daily basis, and I do it so habitually, that I don't even realize what I am doing:  I expect my alarm to go off, I expect to have a hot shower, I expect Blake to take out the trash, I expect Mallory to feed the dog, I expect to arrive safely to and from work, I expect everyone in my life to get through the day injury/illness free.  And in all honestly, I get a little put-out when those expectations do not go as planned.  But other things are a real treat when I don't have any expectation of the task:  Blake cleaning his room (rare treat), Glenn offering to cook, Mallory making cookies or unloading the dishwasher, someone offering to pay for my gas, a free lunch when an establishment doesn't meet their own expectations, let alone ours. 

Every time (okay maybe every is an exaggeration) that I am disappointed in the ending, I stop and ask myself did I place a noun or a verb on that.  If I placed the noun on it, I can only be upset with myself.  I can not be upset with something/someone that had no idea what the expectation was and therefore had no idea what they were supposed to be doing/saying in order to make me happy.  Ouch - Expectation is a wee-bit selfish!  Spoken expectations can cause pressure, Unspoken ones can hurt.

Same goes when I can't meet the expectations of others.  It leaves me feeling like I have disappointed them or I am not valued.  An example of this would be an employer.  Every year there is an annual review where performance is evaluated on the expectations of the position.  And so you do all you can to meet or exceed those expectations (who has two thumbs and is an over-achiever? This girl!) throughout the year only to find out at the next year's review that the criteria was changed.  No one told you the about the changes, but you did not meet the expectations of the new criteria.  My family has experienced that and it is disheartening to say the least.  It can destroy self-esteem and murder morale.  Glenn calls it 'dangling the carrot'.  Always being enticed, but never able to grab it. 

And Young says later in Chapter 14:

Responsibilities and expectations are the basis of guilt and shame and judgment, and they provide the essential framework that promotes performance as the basis for identity and value.  You know well what it is like not to live up to someone's expectations.

I Take comfort in the reality that God only uses the verb with us.  He knows every hair on our heads, so why would he need to put a noun on us if already knows everything there is to know about us?  God rejoices when we rise and He looks forward to the day with EXPECTANCY of all the ways in which we will grow our relationship with Him.  It is exciting for Him when we pray, when we worship and study the bible with others, when we lift our voices in song to Him (albeit a tone-deaf one).  He doesn't expect it out of us, after all he knows we are simply human, but eagerly awaits in anticipation for all the moments throughout the day that we will choose to lean on Him, to acknowledge that we need Him, to trust Him to the fullest extent of our sinful being.  In the book of Job, I think Satan expected things to go waaaayyy different.  But Job was honest with God and waited with expectancy for God's plan and God's rewards were far greater than Job could have ever envisioned or fancied for himself.  This book is about a conversation, about the expectancy of being together an talking it through.

The Shack is a fictional work about several conversations, but that does not negate it from having valuable perspective..."God is a verb"...the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross brought Expectancy to all generations.  May we learn to allow Christ to work in our lives with giddy expectancy of all He has planned for us rather than expecting Him to check 'Exceeds Expectations' on our annual review.  Nouns are about finality, verbs are about action. 

Make EXPECTANCY! a mindless part of your conversation today!