Habit of Expectancy

There is a bareness and a clarity that is inherent in this newness of year.

A bit more order and routine emerges from the bedlam.

And we are left with room.

And a bit of weight.  The weight of the things I know my heart needs to change. And I bear the fear that it might not change. Again.

As I take in this devotional, Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) makes me think. After she mentions how we wear our routine behaviors, I keep thinking.  Like a nun wears her "habit" so we wear our customs, our rhythms, our patterns.

We dress ourselves.  We trend toward an appearance

We express ourselves and are experienced by others by those behaviors we create a trend from.  Not so much the outliers.  The habits.

So, little by little the adage comes true..."we will soon be what we are now becoming"...

I have to keep my heart wired in straight around this or I move toward doom and gloom and panic. “I have got to change this! Repattern that! Determine to do it differently.”  That is my auto pilot.

So I stumble into the Word, not knowing what I am looking for.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace (not gloom and doom and panic) as you trust in him (not me), so that you may overflow with hope (not naysay the possibility of change) by the power of the Holy Spirit. (not my power…)" (Romans 15:13 NIV)

Sigh...

It isn't sourced from me.  It does not depend on what my trend was or what habit I wore last year. It is not built up or town down according to how many days, admittedly, weeks I spent magnetized to tasks and performance and the outside world. It does not wain from the mornings not spent still and dialed in.

Then I exhale with relief as this next Scripture sinks in: 

"That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting (made roomy for the Lord). We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy (not gloom and panic). Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting (when we want to give up hoping for change), God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans". (Romans 8:24-26 MSG)

I wait in need of change, grace floods. It fills in all these places enlarged. I wasn't given a map of all the Lord wants to birth in me this year...."We don’t know what enlarges us"...what specific change we should push to birth. But Grace floods in all those places enlarged by pregnancy, no room for gloom and panic. 

When pregnant, we don’t know the detailed features, temperament, we haven’t yet even met face-to-face our baby.  So we don’t know the details and features of what God has us expectant with. We do know, though, that it is good. 

Like when pregnant, we take care of ourselves…intake nutrients, avoid toxins, ready the environment….

We cannot produce a baby by sheer will.  We cannot by choosing so, make that baby grow healthy. We cannot predict the circumstances of the birth. 

But we can take in the nutrients, avoid the toxins, prepare our environment—that is work we can do, what we can control, to put ourselves in the way of what God wants to restore and birth in us.

And it is good. It is joyful, restful, sweet. To put ourselves in the way of Him and wait, filled in with Grace, for what is in store.

So I want to wear a habit of relief.  Instead of being “diminished” from waiting for change, I want to be filled in with Joy and Ease. I want that trend. I want to wrap it around me like a cape, visible and expressed and experienced outside and in.

You are loved,