In my history, I’ve volleyed some mile-high expectations at people. While my awareness of this fact helps me temper that tendency, I’ve only recently realized that I can also put a lot of expectations on events. Take Christmas, for example. I can place a truckload of pressure on it to be (waves hands in the air) totally and completely magical. One would think this propensity would’ve kicked into its highest gear when my children were little. Alas, that happened only this past Christmas of 2024.

For the first time last year, one of our adult kids couldn’t come home for Christmas, making the typical Strong Five a party of four. I was determined to compensate for this different looking and feeling holiday by ensuring that Christmas still ticked off all the boxes of enchantment and wonder, even as I missed our absent kiddo.

And sure, much of last Christmas was wonderful! Settling ourselves into the joy of Christmas Eve service, homemade cinnamon rolls, and matching jammies was positively delightful. But when you walk into a holiday with sky high expectations like I did, you forget to account for real life with its bad moods and bad news, which never cares if it’s Jesus’s birthday or your own birthday. It’ll barge right through the front door of your holiday regardless.

And then you get mighty upset because while the carol of this Christmas was already in a minor key, the uninvited “turn of events” knocks it completely out of tune. And you’re left feeling more despondent than delighted, like you failed Christmas. Or at least, I felt that way last year.

Thankfully, after much prayer, the Lord reminded me that I was the one who conjured up the idea that a good Christmas could only look and feel like a Norman Rockwell one. That wasn’t His idea. A Norman Rockwell Christmas makes for a lovely vignette in a painting, but it’s not real life. I wanted a good Strong family Christmas, so this Strong had to calm the heck down and abandon all her unreasonable expectations. This Strong had to release control and stop trying to manhandle every holiday detail. This Strong needed to leave room for what God wanted to do in my life and my family’s lives during this season.

In her Advent devotional Prepare Him Room, author Susie Larson writes, “…with Jesus, subtraction precedes multiplication. Humility precedes honor and breakthrough.” Unreasonable expectations always hold hands with pride, and they wear t-shirts that say, “All my faith is in all my own Very Important Plans.” But in God’s economy, less leads to more. And while it’s okay to have reasonable expectations,I wanted to carry this new motto in my heart:

I will ease my expectations to embrace a holy expectancy.

To that end, I want to have a greater awareness of Christ’s presence this Christmas season instead of my own plans. When this happens, I’m more thankful, more joyful, and less stressed. I major in the majors and release the minors. And while there’s not a thing wrong with gift planning, cookie baking, and tree trimming, I’ll leave a generous amount of room for expectancy so that I’m in a posture to open my hands and receive what God gives.

I will not force outcomes.

Perhaps you’re thinking, This sounds great and all, but how do I get from that place of frazzled expectations to holy expectancy?

Like me, you stop turning inward and instead turn upward. You’re thankful for who and what is a part of your holiday.

For the first Christmas long ago, I think it’s safe to say that Mary didn’t intend to give birth in the company of farm animals. But her humble, less than comfortable circumstances became the setting for the biggest blessing known to all.

Mary’s labor and delivery location wasn’t good, but the Good News was birthed just the same. God can birth good things in the middle of your difficulties and ruined plans too.

I type these words for you weeks before Christmas Day, so I don’t yet know how the day went for me. As you read this, however, it’s Christmas Day +1. I don’t know how your own Christmas Day fared, but this I do know: If your Christmas didn’t go according to plan, whether in diminutive or drastic ways, it’s not too late to embrace a holy expectancy for how the Lord plans to show up for you and fill in the gap between what you expected and what you experienced. If your own plans went sideways I hope you’ll join me in saying, “God, if you redeemed all of humanity through the birth of your Son, you can redeem this day, this hour. Show up in this moment for your glory and for my benefit and for the benefit of my loved ones.”

So, let’s keep our hearts receptive to receiving and accepting what God gave this year. Let’s apologize for placing faith in our plans going just so instead of placing faith in God’s plans, come what may. Let’s declare a new beginning in Jesus’s name. Let’s see Jesus in the places we might’ve missed if our plans had gone off without a hitch. After all, subtracting ourselves multiplies the ways of Jesus, and His birth is what truly exceeds every expectation. Glory be!

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