The Glory of Failed Expectations

Last Saturday, The River Academy graduated its seventh class of seniors. In stark contrast to my own commencement in 1975 this ceremony was both encouraging and edifying. King's Cross deacon (and full-time teacher at TRA) Scott Welch, was one of the teachers selected by the students to address them as they matriculated. Scott's offering was not recorded, but he has graciously provided his transcript (below.) Enjoy.  

I want to start by saying “thank you.” Thank you to the seniors for asking me to speak to them on such an important occasion. Thank you to their parents who trusted me to teach them for so many years. And thank you to all of the family members that came to support these young men and women here at their commencement.

I am going to be honest with you... I don’t remember my commencement speaker. I don’t really remember my graduation. But I don’t even remember who spoke let alone the deep message he probably thought he was imparting to my class and me. This has two effects on me as I think about being up here today. First, if I give bad advice, it probably won’t ruin your lives. But, second, I like a challenge and I want today’s message to be memorable. Not because it is my message, but because it is true. We will see if I succeed.

I want to talk today about 2 things that you can expect about your future. First, that almost nothing goes as you expect it will. And Second, that when things don’t go as you expect, look there for the clearest direction from God.

I graduated from High School in 1990. I imagine the young people are thinking I am really old and the older people are thinking I am really young right now. That is the benefit of being middle aged.

When I graduated, I had already signed up to be in the Navy. Actually to be more accurate, my parents signed me up for the Navy because I was only 17 years old. I graduated from Navy boot camp before my 18^th birthday. At the time, I thought I knew God but had no desire to follow him. And for the next 5 years, not a single big thing in my life went as I had expected.

When I signed up for the Navy, I was asked what job I wanted to be assigned to. For some reason, I told them that I wanted to be a nuclear tech. But that is the hardest job to get in the Navy and you have to have the highest test scores to make it. I missed it by 4 points. Those 4 points saved me 5 years of a job I now know that I personally would have hated. Failed expectation #1. Instead I became an anti-submarine warfare operator as an aircrewman.

I graduated from Boot Camp, from Aircrew school, and then from AW school which is the school where you learn everything you need to track and blow up submarines. From there we got to request where we might want to go. We could choose Helicopters, Big planes called P-3s, or a 4-seater jet called an S-3 Viking. You could also choose East Coast, West Coast, or overseas. My request sheet looked like this: P-3’s on the East coast, Helicopters on the east coast or p-3s overseas. Although I graduated at the top of my class all three requests were denied and I got my least favorite of the options, flying in the S-3 Viking on the West Coast. San Diego California. Failed expectation #2.

In San Diego, after almost 3 years, I finally completed all my training and I had decided that flying in Jets was going to be amazingly cool, Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer cool, but not quite. Sorry to many of you who don’t know that reference. So I had done pretty well. Of the 50 recruits that started this path together only 7 of us had made it through the whole program. So we again got a chance to request orders. I wanted to stay in San Diego and fly in the S-3 Viking. Unfortunately, the Navy was no longer tracking and destroying very many submarines at the time and therefore I was sent as ship’s company to the USS Nimitz in Bremerton, WA. In fact I shipped out immediately to meet the ship in the Persian Gulf. Ship’s company means not with a squadron, and so, I never flew a single mission in the S-3 Viking. Failed expectation #3.

I could go on telling you more of these times where my expectations were not met, but I want to let you know something. Every one of those failed expectations were huge moments in my life. Here is the thing…

As I look back at every one of those failed expectations. Getting what I wanted would have been the worst thing for me. Failed Expectation #1 - Being a nuclear tech is about the farthest from what I really wanted as a direction for my life and I most likely would have never become a teacher. Failed Expectation #2 -  I was sent, against my will, to San Diego, CA instead of staying on the East Coast near my family. Within a 2 months of moving there I met a guy who shared the gospel with me and I became a Christian and was baptized. And Failed Expectation #3 – Moving to Bremerton, WA was one of the lowest points in my life. But before I had even lived there for a month, I walked into a hole in the wall Christian book store and met the love of my life. So much for my plans.

Here is the point of all these autobiographical stories… In all of these instances in my life, every time that I had my dreams dashed against the rocks, every time that I expected one thing and got the opposite, and every time I prayed for something and God said “No.” It led to the greatest things in my life.

What can we learn from all this? How can it apply to young people who are just beginning their journey? Well…

Things in college or wherever you are, will not be exactly what you expected. In some cases it will be better, but many times it won’t. Isn’t this how you have found life to be? When you look back, I am sure you have seen many instances of things not going as you expected. Did your senior year go as you expected it would last summer? Did your friendships develop the way you though they would through high school? Are you going to college you expected to 4 years ago? Boys, was Pride and Prejudice really as girly as you expected? Ok maybe that one was what you expected.

So my first encouragement for you as you look to you future is this…When things don’t go as expected, When you make plans and they never happen, when people fail you, when you fail yourself, and when you think you know what is best for you and God disagrees, these are the times that God speaks the clearest direction in our lives. So look for the wisdom of God when things don’t go as planned. The good things will always be wonderful, but if you can even see YOUR times of failed expectations as the good and perfect plan of God, then you are golden.

So will you remember this? I don’t know. I bet there will come a time when you are sitting in your dorm room or wherever you end up and you will feel like nothing is going the way you thought, and I want you to remember that God speaks the loudest in the times when he redirects our lives. So when this happens, pick yourself up and call out to God. Ask Him what he has planned for you.

I can’t give specific instructions and stories about each of you like I like to do. But I want to talk to you collectively. I am really proud of you. Not every story has a happy ending. We have learned that from History, Literature and even the Bible. There were definitely times where I saw that things might not end well for your class. I didn’t have you your Sophomore year, but I saw the sadness and the frustration. You lost some people along this journey, but you guys stuck it out. You finished the race and you finished well. I would be happy to have any of my kids look up to you. Congratulations class of 2012. I love you guys.