Allow me to be completely vulnerable with you this month — I am trying to work on presence, and so far it’s not going great. On one hand, anticipation is the natural enemy of being present, and on the other, anticipation has served me well in business because anticipation is literally part of my job. Recently, I have been having some challenges switching off that light switch, so to speak.
I think all of us in the post-COVID era are struggling with balancing being present and anticipation in some form or another. Some of us fall into the trap of creating problems just to fix, while many of us at the minimum are asking, “What’s the next loan I need to pay off?” “What’s the next life milestone?” “What’s the next column I need to write?”
And funny enough, I am writing about this in the middle of struggling with it, and my tone as I write about this is even, “How do we battle presence vs. anticipation?” Like it’s just another hurdle we need to jump through together.
But digging deeper, I think that reveals the question to finding balance between the two — when does anticipation stop serving me and start stealing from me? I believe when we don’t check our heart posture on that, that’s when we start creating problems to solve and stop trusting in God’s plan.
This isn’t relegated to just milestones or our relationships — I was talking to a pastor a few months back (I will not be name dropping) and he confided in me that he misses the passion that he had when he was a young Christian. While I grew up around the Church, I didn’t live my life through Christ until mid-2024. What he described stuck with me because I was already aware of the inevitability of what he was describing. He loves Christ with all of his soul, but as he described settling in with church planting, growing a family, falling into a routine within ministry — he missed the passion and the adventure of being young in your faith.
What struck me wasn’t that he loved Christ any less — it was that the routines of life had replaced the absolute wonder of it. That anticipation of what could happen ignores the beauty of living in the moment. What I think all of this looks like in practice is to anticipate what you can influence, and be present with what you can’t. The Lord cannot work in a place where you are using anticipation to solve either uncertainty or complacency.
Planning isn’t the opposite of faith — Joseph, Nehemiah and Paul all anticipated — instead, the illusion of control is. When we think of surrendering, it’s not ‘don’t think ahead,’ rather ‘I am going to nurture what’s in front of me,’ because the outcome of any given situation does not belong to you. Surrendering allows beautiful things to happen — like that pastor, who recently was blessed with the opportunity to plant a new church and begin leading it.
Your debt was paid for already, don’t run through life worried about making it worth the price that was paid. Difficult seasons have to be lived for the betterment of your relationship, your finances and your life. At some point, we have to stop demanding certainty from tomorrow and receive what the Lord has given us today — so here’s my advice: Love like there’s no such thing as a broken heart, look for the silver-linings wherever you are, and trust the Lord fully, even if you are in the middle of the Valley of Shadows.
See y’all next month.
