Trust vs. Expectations
Something I’ve been thinking about for years, that I’ve talked to people about a number of times: what is the boundary between healthy trust and unhealthy expectations? Too often in the past, I feel like I’ve set myself up for some sort of fall, but just tried to brush it aside as a price that comes with trust - it just comes with the territory.
Or does it? The majority of the hurt probably comes from expectations, fair or unfair, held on another person to provide. Proverbs 3:5 says to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” If I’m trusting Him with all my heart, does that leave no room to trust others? Maybe. But I think God is saying more than the obvious fact that I should trust Him first. When Jesus says that the second command to love your neighbor is like the first (to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, body, and strength), there is a clear relationship between the two: the second flows naturally from the first, the beautiful harmony of vertical and horizontal relationships. Paul writes in 1 Cor. 13:7 that love always trusts, so clearly trust is an integral part of love. But how does that look different from expecting? If you’re placing trust, doesn’t that mean you’re placing expectations?
I really don’t know the answer to this and I’m still trying to navigate it, but maybe it looks something like this: according to one of my dear graduated sociology friends, the natural tendency for people is to trust new acquaintances (if I can recall correctly, said something along the lines of, “why would they lie? There is little perceived social advantage to lying, so the majority of people are honest and people believe them in return.” We trust what they say is true, but we don’t expect them to take care of us. If they do (and assuming we’ve cleared them of having any ulterior motive), it’s counted as a huge blessing and we’re thankful.
Maybe I should be viewing acts of love and kindness from friends and loved ones more as acts from acquaintances or strangers - not really expecting anything, ever, but being pleasantly surprised when they do. It doesn’t mean that I think they’re liars (and thus, I trust them), but just that I don’t anticipate my need for love to be fulfilled by them to any degree (holding expectations on them). We’d typically say such a view is sad and myopic, but that’s according to the world, which only sees all of us imperfect humans as the source of love. When we bring God into the picture, everything changes. Not holding expectations on others leaves me room to place all my trust and expectations on God, the only one who can truly provide.
