Frequently I have found myself unsatisfied when circumstances in life do not meet my expectations. Often my thoughts are, “I will be happy if situation ‘X’ meets expectation ‘Y,’ but if it does not, I will not be satisfied.” If my kids’ bedroom room is clean, then they are “good” and I can be happy. If it comes to bed time and throughout the week the bedroom floor became a combination of a thrift store and a dumpster, the kids are “bad” and I am unhappy because my expectation was not met. Unfortunately this negativity directed towards those I love disrupts opportunities for love and connection.

After bumbling along this way for too long, I finally awakened to the seriousness of the issue as a strain emerged in the relationship between myself and my son Henry. At 6 he is still in diapers. Overtime, my expectation of toileting overshadowed any sort of positivity between us as I thought, “If Henry can’t use the toilet properly then he is not doing well and must be ‘fixed.’ Until he is potty trained, He is “bad” and doesn’t deserve positivity.”  

My expectation was unrealistic. As Henry cannot choose to change his developmental age and magically leap ahead to a stage in which potty training is possible, I cannot measure his value by that standard. 

Rather than expect the impossible and live in dissatisfaction and tension, I adjusted my expectations (and purchased rubber gloves to use during diapering). With my eyes finally opened a little bit more, I realized that the little boy in diapers already understood what took his dad 32 years to learn: “Love is not earned.”