Expectations Rights & Privileges

EXPECTATIONS	RIGHTS	PRIVILEGES
Grow closer to God	To an opinion	Hot water
Have fun	To share my beliefs	A bed
See a Highland Cow	Privacy	3 meals/day
Eat lots of Scottish food	Have alone time	An Awesome team! J
Stay w/ Scottish people		Transportation
Climb a mountain

The things highlighted in blue are the things that either never happened or at some point were compromised in one way or another.  For example, I expected that I was going to get to climb Ben Nevis, a mountain in the highlands with a breathtaking view of Scotland.  Unfortunately for me, the trip was cancelled last minute do to extreme weather conditions.  Disappointing, yes, but we had a wonderful time with our team that day! I also expected to live with Scottish people… but I’m not exactly sure why, considering we were staying with YWAM–an American organization–but nevertheless, I did.  I expected to eat lots of traditional Scottish meals, and we ate mostly healthy American food.  Don’t get me wrong, it was absolutely delicious and the people were amazing!!  But it wasn’t what I expected.

Going into this trip I had 4 rights that I felt no one could take those away from me.  I thought that I had the right to have alone time and privacy.  In three weeks combined, I maybe had 4-5 hours total of alone time and had minimal privacy.  I lived in a room with all 6 of my girls and showered in community showers.  Thankfully, bathrooms were private! However, I do know that I won’t have that right many times on the world race-so I better get over it now!  🙂   I also thought I was going to get to share more about my personal beliefs and my relationship with Christ than I did.  I learned a lot about Scottish culture and about the people.  I also learned that a great way to scare them off is to start talking about Jesus or the bible.  At the homeless shelter, I started discussing the New Testament with a guy at my table.  Suddenly, this other guy sitting across from me throws back his chair and storms off.  I had no idea what I did to offend him, but apparently, the New Testament offended him.  So, through this experience and many others, I realized that it was not my right to share the gospel and my beliefs, but it was my right to LOVE the people and build RELATIONSHIPS with them.  As those relationships began to grow, discussions about the Lord became easier as God would open doors for conversations about Him.

When writing down the privileges originally, I was pretty certain that we would have all of those things in Scotland–and for the most part, we did.  I will never forget though, how my first shower at the house was freezing cold!! Honestly, I think it was God playing a joke on me, because we had hot water the rest of the time… but it really did register for me, how I expected to have that privilege.  I also expected to have transportation whenever we needed it–and for the most part, we had that as well.  One time though, we needed a taxi from the church to the Stanley house around 10pm, but there were none available that could fit us all, so we had to walk a couple miles home.  Of course it was a lovely walk (as always in Scotland) and we really enjoyed ourselves, but I couldn’t help but remember how I expected to not have this problem. 

I believe God was teaching me to let go of the control I so desperately strive to obtain, and let Him guide me through my day to day life.  Sometimes we say that we “trust God to lead us”, but do we actually TRUST God to lead us?  I am learning to let go of what I want, and surrender to what He wants.  Going on this 11 month journey is definitely one of those things, and I believe He is going to use it in greater ways that I could ever imagine.