Our Expectations

Lists are cropping up everywhere: What are your plans for 2022? What are your Aims and Goals? Personally, I’m reading frantically to complete at least one more book for Wendy’s Reading Challenge 2021!

Expectations are funny things, aren’t they? I know it was one of the things that struck me the most when our children arrived. Their lack of expectation was tragic. Thinking back to our childhood and the crazily early wake-ups for birthdays, my parents groaning as we staggered in at 5, telling them it was our birthday and where were our presents? When we adopted, we expected to have those same glowing scenes. However, there was no expectation, at least not for anything good to happen. No early wakeups (thank you, Lord!), but no expectant sleepy baby faces either.

The last two years with their ever-changing rules and cancellations have affected me and many others as well. Are we still looking forward to 2022 with the same enthusiastic expectation we always had? Are we carefully lining up brand new notebooks into piles of “too nice to use” and “might be able to be touched”? Or are you gradually becoming more cynical? I find myself secretly thinking as my children did for their first handful of years with us. “It’ll probably not happen anyway.”

Sometimes our expectations are around an event or meeting. We can picture it in our mind, the way people will be thronging around our still-boxed up books, eager to buy signed copies. How publishers will be begging us to allow them to print our books. Of course, those expectations only occur at two o’clock in the morning, before we’re fully awake. Our experiences will colour our expectations. When life doesn’t go the way we expected, do you adjust our expectations or do you keep hoping?

Note the Mum reading by herself in the corner! Magical Christmas indeed...

Imagine Christmas with four children. Magical, lots of people would say. Happy children’s faces, board games, snuggled up to you under the tree with a wonderful book, hanging on your every word. Happy excitement when opening their presents, followed by peaceful wintery walks. For most adopted families, this expectation isn’t going to happen any time soon. For the last eight years, I have been threatening to skip December altogether and move straight into January after November.

This year, we lowered all expectations even further. And actually, Christmas was lovely. We did have the After-Christmas Slump, but even that wasn’t too slumpy. The children knew mostly what presents they were getting, there were no ‘proper’ presents, unwrapping was spread out over three days and their favourite present was a fluffy blanket each. No expectations, no pressure. Apart from other people around us. “What are you getting the kids this year?” Ehm, not much, a blanket and a book and ehm...a popper thingy in their stocking.

So what were your writing expectations? “I bet nobody wants to buy my book anyway, and those that accidentally do will regret it.” Maybe we should all lower our expectations? Look for the personal blessing instead; our personal walk with God and seeing the fact that He carried us in His Hands at all times as the best gift for this year. I’m convinced that an outlook like that would make 2021 the best writing year ever for us. Maybe I should use one of my new notebooks for journaling my expectations this coming year? Not that really new notebook, of course. 

Maressa Mortimer is Dutch but lives in the beautiful Cotswolds, England with her husband and four (adopted) children. Maressa is a homeschool mum as well as a pastor’s wife, so her writing has to be done in the evening when peace and quiet descend on the house once more. She loves writing Christian fiction, as it’s a great way to explore faith in daily life. Because of her interest in writing, Maressa is part of Creativity Matters: Find Your Passion For Writing, an anthology encouraging people to write.

Her debut novel, Sapphire Beach, was published in December 2019, and her first self published novel, Walled City, came out in December 2020, followed by Viking Ferry, a novella. Beyond the Hills is the second book in the Elabi Chronicles, and was released on June 18^th 2021. All of Maressa’s books are available from her website, www.vicarioushome.com, Amazon or local bookshops.