Expectation

Normally, I have high expectations for my yarn. I buy yarn for projects rather than just. because it’s beautiful. I have the end result in mind. The yarn pictured above was bought for the 2021 Stephen West shawl Mystery Knit Along (Mkal). A Mkal is when a bunch of knitters sign up to get a pattern in sections so you don’t have any idea what the end product will look like. We knew we were knitting a shawl but we didn’t know the design.

I had never done this before but I heard over 11,000 knitters from all over the world had signed up and I just had to jump on the bandwagon. It was an interesting experience to start a project with no expectations. I was able to be in the moment with the clue and follow the pattern step by step without any worry about the future.

I tend to have unrealistic expectations about the future. It’s a good thing I know this about myself so I can work at letting go of the unrealistic expectations. Letting go helps me enjoy whatever happens instead of being disappointed. Trying not to have unrealistic expectations helps me more flexible and open to new and different experiences.

It’s not that I think expectations are bad. We need to work toward something but it’s important to be flexible and able to reset expectations when things change.

At the time of Christ, people thought Jesus would come again in the near future. That didn’t happen but as Christians, we live in hope that the time will come when Jesus does return. To me, this return is about the realization of God’s kingdom on earth where no one is hungry or enslaved or suffering at the hands of another. This is an important expectation that we work toward a world that demonstrates “Your kingdom come, your will be done.”