Unfulfilled Expectations - The One Year Women's Friendship Devotional

Unfulfilled Expectations

You must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:15-16

As a teen, Hilda had fairy-tale fantasies about her future marriage. The hope of meeting someone who would truly love her kept her company during lonely high school years and carried her into college. By then, she had more sharply defined her future with her knight in shining armor: He would stroke her hair as he asked for the details of her day, and they’d prepare dinner together before cuddling in front of the fireplace.

Then one morning, Jim, one of the new workers, smiled at her across a stack of trays. At their scheduled break, he introduced himself and asked her name. She gave it but stammered she’d never really liked it.

He looked bewildered. “That’s my grandma’s name. She’s fun. I bet you are too.”

Hilda began to look forward to going to work. As she and Jim continued to chat on breaks, they discovered they both were business majors and enjoyed tennis. By the time Jim asked her to attend a campus movie with him, Hilda was smitten.

They married a week after graduation. Quickly they settled into a new apartment and plunged into challenging jobs. But for Hilda, something was missing: Jim didn’t call her in the middle of his busy day, and he didn’t stroke her hair when they sat in front of the fireplace. Their Saturday-morning tennis matches had given way to errand running and budget balancing. In fact, when she thought about it, she wondered if they had anything in common. This certainly wasn’t the way marriage was supposed to be.

Meanwhile, Jim was bewildered when Hilda didn’t laugh at his silly jokes anymore and was becoming more and more critical of everything he did. In fact, come to think of it, she really had changed from the sweet girl who had won him over with her shy smile.

Had marriage changed them both that much? Of course not. Hilda had married an image. Jim didn’t fit the picture of what husbands, especially hers, were supposed to do. And Jim had had his own preconceived notions about marriage. Without meaning to, they had fallen short of each other’s expectations. —SANDRA

Lord, when it comes to relationships, help me to look to your Word for direction rather than to literature, movies, or my own fantasies. Remind me of your plan: Humans were made to be in relationship with you and with others.

And they lived happily ever after is one of the most tragic sentences in literature . . . because it tells a falsehood about life and has led countless generations of people to expect something from human existence that is not possible on this fragile, failing, imperfect earth. —JOSHUA LOTH LIEBMAN (1907–1948), AMERICAN RABBI AND WRITER