I've had my own fair shares of Pinterest fails over the years. I remember once in high school a friend came over and we found a pizza casserole recipe that called for egg noodles and a few other kind of strange ingredients that formed a big, burned, pile of pepperoni mush. Banana facial masks, & egg and avocado hair masks that made my skin and hair greasier than a cookie sheet covered in PAM. I've done paper mache' creatures that look like the extras on The Walking Dead. Out of the dozens upon dozens of Pinterest-inspired things that I've tried I would say that maybe three of them have worked out well.
A few years ago I made Teddy Grahams in a Brownie Bubble Bath...identical, right?
RIP teddys...
This semester I'm taking a class called Planning and Facilitating Infant and Toddler Development and our first project was to create a developmentally appropriate toy that we could incorporate into a lesson plan for infants or toddlers. I've had such a GREAT track record with Pinterest before, so guess where I started looking for ideas first?
Not. My brightest moment.
I found this precious little DIY vegetable garden that I immediately knew I wanted to tackle. "How hard can sewing be???"
Mind you, I've sewn ONE thing in my entire life. I took a Family and Consumer Science course in 10th grade and we had to make a pair of pajama pants. I spent WEEKS in class on that stupid pair of pants, and I'm pretty sure I made a C- or a D. Below an 75 on a Home Economics project ya'll. Sewing is not my thing at all.
But, I just knew that I would create these perfect little vegetables and I went around for about a week and told everyone how excited I was to tackle my next project. I wanted to make a good impression on my professor. I wanted to present something that I worked hard on, I wanted to learn a new skill, I wanted to make the best stinking vegetable garden the world has ever seen! Doug and Melissa would be calling me in a few weeks asking if the company could patent my product! (Ok, I didn't think that last part, but I was feeling pretty good about myself before I actually started this thing...)
Expectation: 2-2 1/2 hours of work and my finished product will look like this...
Reality: 6 hours total, seams on the outside, stuffing busting at the edges, a lopsided lemon, potatoes that look like human feces, and some pretty stinking cute little strawberries. I didn't make those though, my mother took pity on my soul and decided to stitch a couple of things together while we watched HGTV. (At least I looked the part...)
Expectations versus Reality.
I'll tell you something that God has been beating into my brain lately is that our expectations of how things are supposed to go but how they actually unfold are two COMPLETELY different things.
Sometimes we expect a certain outcome. When I was a little girl I said I would have a mansion, a husband, a limousine, a chocolate fountain, and a pony named Patricia by the time I was twenty. Sorry to break it to you six year old Melissa but that did not happen and it will most certainly not be happening any time soon. When I started college in 2013 I expected to be teaching in a classroom on my own the summer after my 22nd birthday, but I can tell you now that I've still got an entire year left of school in addition to this semester. I expect my commute to take about 25 minutes and to be full of sunshine and rainbows, but the reality is that I live in Memphis where people drive with their toes or with their heads on backwards. I haven't quite figured out the issue in regards to that epidemic yet...
Oftentimes what we paint as an ideal picture in our head is just a scribble that's a part of the perfect canvas that God has already painted. We expect that our little scribble will be hung proudly in the middle of a French art gallery, but the reality is that our artwork is being hung up by clothespins on a strong in the kiddie section of McDonalds.
Our inaccurate expectations don't only apply to tangible outcomes, but they apply to our spiritual walks with God as well:
If you can think back to the moment where you accepted Christ as the lord and Savior of your life can you remember how excited you were? Do you remember telling your friends and your family about this amazing decision you just made? Do you remember being on absolute fire for the Lord? I know I can. And I remember talking with older Christians who seemed to have it all together and I remember thinking "Wow. I can't wait until I have a quiet time every day." or "I can't wait until I can pray like he can one day" or "She's so mature/wise...I can't wait to be just like her one day." and I've always been a little jealous on some level of the christians who just have it. And so I think I had these expectations that one day spiritual maturity and wisdom would just fall down from the sky and I would magically be this super christian who never had any problems and just pranced around being able to serve everyone in the world with no reservations because my life would be perfect like the other christians in my life.
Expectation: Perfection! Prosperity! Happiness! Ultra Peace!
Reality: Failures. Anxiety. Depression. Loneliness. Bitterness. Frustration. Sin nature...Qualities of a normal, healthy, imperfect human being in need of God's Grace. And I need that grace just as much today and tomorrow as I did on that day in 2009 when I asked Christ into my heart.
It's a lot like the world of Pinterest. We build our expectations around these ideal images, we put all of our expectations of our own product based on the outcome of someone else's, but we lack the basic skills that we need to make our projects successful. (Exhibit A: See lopsided lemon or one of my poo-poo potatoes) And then we get mad when our expectations don't match the reality of what we got ourselves into.
Also, as christians, I think we expect that God is going to allow us to be comfortable. We think that life is hard enough as it is, so surely He won't do much to challenge us and force us to grow. He won't make us change up our routines. He won't make us do anything that makes us mad so long as we're good. NOPE. Take it from the girl going through boocoodles of changes and discomfort in life right now: God cares about spreading His name and joy on behalf of His heavenly kingdom for His glory and He needs to use us more than He needs us to be comfortable.
I'll leave off with this thought too...
Aren't you thankful for those pictures of the fails? Aren't you glad that someone told you the snowman cookie cake is going to look like the Star Wars Space Slug unless you do steps XY&Z? Aren't you glad that some silly girl gave you a glimpse into the world of a novice sewer so you know how to plan your next project? (Pro Tip: Just go buy some play food from Toys R Us...DIY is not worth it.) Aren't you glad that you have seen what happens when you shrink Elsa's head down to a softball and give her the body of John Cena?
Ok...maybe not that last one...I kind of wish I could unsee that myself.
Take that into consideration! You can learn from your own mistakes obviously, but when you are open and share those mistakes with other people- think about how much they might be able to learn from you! That means that we have to stop living these perfect, church-y, christian-y lives on the internet and start being real and transparent with people. It's the most unnatural thing in the world to just be open and honest with someone you don't know very well, but it's also one of the most freeing things you can do for yourself. And maybe even for that other person!
Here's to embracing our realities this week! May we be blessed in waiting for God to reveal His perfect plans to us
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