Expectations, Rights, and Cinderella

This is the new question that Ben and I are asking each other lately..."were you expecting something?" or "did you have an expectation of something?" or even, "do you feel as though your rights were violated?"

Part of why we are asking these questions is a joke. I have been doing this Bible study and this was the topic of one week's work...yielding my rights, and not having expectations. The jist was that our anger and frustration over situations comes from feeling like I have rights and expectations of things happening a certain way.

Ben and I have discovered over the years that when God is trying to teach us something we really need to learn, it keeps coming up and then we discuss it ad nauseum, ad infinitum and then we incorporate it as jokes into our discussions.

The funny thing is that that is when we know that we are really embracing a point God wants to make with us.

So...Ben is driving down the road and begins to get angry that the car in front of us is going slower than the speed limit...you can actually see the smoke beginning to curl out from his ears, then his nostrils. The eyes are beginning to go red and it seems as though all the drops of blood in his whole body has rushed to his face. I don't know how he even has enough blood left in his hands to feel the steering wheel! Then, I pop up and say, with a smile on my face, and a voice like Cinderella's..."Is that person violating your rights? Did you expect him to behave differently?" Then, like magic, he is actually a white man again, back from his red man status! The fire has gone out of his belly because the smoke has disappeared from view, and oh my goodess, I think I see him really breathing again!

I could share a similar, but uglier, story from my life, but I think that sharing one of Ben's is more fun...at least for me! And I have always wanted to be Cinderella anyway...