As the palm trees came into focus like angry splinters waving in the heat, I knew I was home. Over the course of the last decade, I have made this land where all kinds of differences collide my place of solace.  Decades are markers of sorts the older you get and I had just returned to Southern California after my 10 year reunion in the Pacific Northwest. It seems like it went by so fast, these 10 years, and I had lived most of them in this dry place where on one side of town it is littered with the small world of movie stars and fancy cars and the other where I dwelt.  That side of town wrestled with issues like social justice, grace, true love, and it is where I felt Jesus show up for the first time in my short life.

I had expectations when I moved here — I wanted to be a movie producer.  This sentiment was captured in the dusty yearbooks we were all laughing at on Saturday night where I had said “In ten years I will be producing a movie or TV show” under an energetic, youthful grin.  An optimistic girl frozen in time.  Those expectations dissolved after a short internship and a rough introduction into “the industry.”  I knew within weeks my heart was no longer in Hollywood.  My expectations changed in that time of not only my career, but of my friends, my faith, my body, my community, of marriage, schooling, and family.

Expectations do funny things to people. They can dictate our life plans, our moods, our families, among many other things. Healthy expectations drive us on and encourage good habits. Unhealthy patterns are shoved on to unsuspecting kids who should have had parents and leaders who knew better, but they were kids once too… so the patterns continue. 

We have kids and expect them to be kind and in some ways amazing. In return our parents should be super heroes, only to find out, some quicker than others, that they most certainly are not. Our best friends are supposed to be just that – the best.  Even simpler things like giving gifts — we expect a thank you.  Or our car to start in the morning, our laptops to turn on or there not to be hair in our food.  So they build and build… some into formidable structures, others becoming wonky Dr. Seuss type floppy buildings.

There are so many of these things we expect and yet for so many, they are not voiced or if they are spoken into the atmosphere, it can seem naive at times or overly ambitious or not as astute as those around you. You’re up for judgment then. They can reveal deeper truths about dreams, ambitions, fears, and manipulations. We often don’t know what to do with our own spoken or unspoken expectations, so how can we handle or help those around us with their own expectations? Then the emotions come: disappointment, envy, joy, anger, compassion, and the messiness of life takes over.

This weekend I was able to reflect on how expectations of my life have morphed into something I wouldn’t have ever believed as a high school graduate while processing all of those things.  As of last year, I was supposed to be living in New York, having just gotten married, and producing movies… ha!  In reality I have been married for five years, I got a master’s degree, I work with college students and write, and I live on an urban farm outside of LA.  How the heck would I explain that to a fresh faced eighteen year old who had just drove away from her tiny Baptist, fundamentalist school with 42 of her fellow classmates?  (Did I forget to mention that last part?)

(part of our urban farm this past Spring)

As I caught up with a few of my classmates, seems that their lives had taken similar twists and turns as well.  Our expectations of family, God, and school had changed – some more than others.  It was refreshing to hear one of my old friends and soccer teammates echo similar thoughts to what I have spent years trying to explain to my mother — my schooling wasn’t evil, but as I write in my book: “They missed out a lot of chances to teach kids that God wasn’t Santa Claus.” Life became so black and white while we spent time there, that having no grace made a rough road for a few of us as we tried to rediscover a graceful God… some never made that discovery.  This doesn’t mean we had permission to sell our souls to the dark side, but for me personally, I had to learn that God was present in the darkness too.

The happy song and dance of rejoice in the Lord always, God will bless you if you pray hard enough didn’t work for me and it was enlightening to hear from others that they were in the same boat.  It gave me a small glimpse that there are others of us drifting out there looking for something the religion of our youth didn’t provide.  A deeper way, a way filled with questions and community, a path of love, a journey of truth… one where people don’t have all the answers and that is okay.  One where we don’t push others down or think we are better than the people at the “public school.”

So as I sink back into the dry heat of the summer, so does my soul sink into the expectations I have for myself as I move into this next decade.  I don’t know if I will look back on this young woman and laugh with affection at her ambition or drive.  All I know is that my expectation of home is where I am because I am at home in myself and that is an expectation I am glad to have met along this journey.  And hopefully, God willing, my book can help others drifting out there to find a home in their own souls too.