Freewrite Prompt: Trapped

Yesterday during the Praise Celebration in church, my friend shared one awesome message of her life. One of the things she mentioned makes me think of her sharing when I saw today's prompt - trapped.

This is a real life story from her. She just got married to her husband early this year and she was celebrating her first birthday after married. So, they were taking a week off and planned a getaway to just be away from work. When her husband asked if he could pay for the whole getaway and asked her what else she wanted for her birthday, she knew she should be happy. He even worked extra hours the week before just to make this getaway happen. But deep within her, she wasn't feeling that happy. I know she loves surprises and she was saying that silently within her, without her realizing, she was expecting perhaps a birthday surprise.

Her husband saw she didn't reply his message which she replies messages very promptly including mine. She was actually taking some time off to search herself and asked God why she was feeling disappointed. God dropped her an impression of a word: EXPECTATIONS! She then knew it that perhaps her silent expectations have trapped her. Wow that was a revelation not just to her, but to me as well.

Sometimes, we trap ourselves in expectations that we put on ourselves, expectations that maybe others put on us too. We can be expecting an ideal wedding, an ideal life partner, an ideal child, an ideal job, an ideal payout, an ideal hospital delivery, an ideal school, an ideal course that fits us, a certain kind of birthday celebration, so on and so forth. Sometimes we also expect our children to behave in a certain acceptable manner. Social media isn't helping when it comes to having expectations when we see others having "the life that we want". All these can trap us and keep us from moving forward. It makes us get stucked in a certain state, expecting that our lives to turn out only the way we want. If it doesn't it also challenges us to think if God says He is good, why doesn't He give us the "good things" that we want?

I like the posture of my friend. She took a step back and she didn't want to let her husband who didn't wrong her to take any consequence from her own silent expectations. She actually took on a very mature posture to step back and process her expectations. They had a lovely vacation finally. That inspires me so much and reminds myself to take such posture too, to review and realign my self-incurred expectations which can be unreal, because usually the one suffering in the end maybe me. Forgoing the ideal can be hard but embracing the current or what I can have can be precious.

What I learnt from her story is only we have the power to free ourselves, from being trapped in expectations and live life to the fullest! Sometimes we can be so trapped in our expectations that it causes an emotional turmoil within us. It can be a good time to realign our expectations and be more down to earth. There's a place to dream and also a place to keep our feet down. That's self care, I think.

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Lest, we have ourselves running around like this Chow Chow, hahhaha!

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Freewrite is a prompt writing initiated by @mariannewest and @improv to write a free-flow post without correcting or editing. I checked out her post to really get what it is before I jumped on the bandwagon. Basically, there is no right or wrong, just let the mind and fingers do their work, to find our creative self and let it come out of us.

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