All my life I’ve been careful to do what’s been expected of me—well, most of my adult life anyway. The thing is, doing what’s expected hasn’t always worked out the way I thought it would.
Growing up, I mostly did what I was told. Sure, I had my ups and downs like everyone else, but I tried hard to be on the side of good. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that in life, the intentions behind our actions often don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things.
Life can turn out to be the best, most terrible nemesis of expectation, no matter how “well-behaved” you are. Expectation, at its core, is an action—it involves wanting. When you want something to happen, your emotions get wrapped up in the hope that it will. But the problem is that life has a way of introducing uncontrollable factors that collide with our hopes right when we least expect it.
I’ve come to dislike that moment when my expectations meet reality—the split second before I realize the true outcome. It’s like being on a roller coaster: you’re slowly riding up, feeling a mix of anticipation, anxiety, excitement, and adrenaline. There’s that silent pause at the top, and then a little click that signals the drop. Right then, someone usually yells out a swear word, and we all scream.
For me, that feeling just before the drop used to feel like hope. But imagine if, after that click, nothing happened. Or worse, the ride down was so slow that there was no thrill at all. The buildup was the best part—until it wasn’t. We expected the thrill, the fear, and the release. When things don’t go as expected, though, we feel tricked, even by the hope we had just seconds before.
The more this happened, the more I began to feel harsh disappointment when things didn’t go as planned. Over time, I stopped blaming the outcome itself and instead blamed those few seconds right before things went left. I’d feel like a fool for expecting something else to happen. And that’s how I started to teach myself to stop wanting—to stop hoping that things could turn out well for me.
The “let-down” feeling became something I wanted to avoid at all costs, so I worked to condition myself not to feel that initial excitement before big events. It’s crazy how one small feeling can shape your whole perspective. I told myself, “Who wants to keep having hope in things that never turn out right?” But what I was missing in all this was the biggest part of hope: faith.
The Bible says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 KJV). You could argue that I did have faith if I hoped for what I wanted to happen, but this is only half true. Hope alone is wanting something to happen, but faith is believing it already will. That’s the key difference.
With faith, you don’t sit and wish; you wait with confidence. It’s like ordering food at a food truck: you take your number, sit down, and wait. You don’t cross your fingers, wondering if they’ll call your number—because you already know they will. That’s the power of faith.
So, to wrap up this post, I’ll leave you with this: don’t let your expectations for life rob you of hope just because things don’t always go as planned. Remember to have faith—pray and believe that you can confidently wait for what you’ve prayed for.
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Author Vera Knight 