Your favorite team loses the big game. Your job doesn't come through with that Christmas bonus (sorry, Clark, no pool for you). Justin Bieber's second album just doesn't cut the mustard (baby, baby, baby, no). Your "hero" is a cheater... Maybe you relate to some of these and maybe you don't. Regardless, we have all had someone or something not live up to our expectations, and it hurt.
The painful truth is we will all be letdown by the ones we hold in the highest esteem at some point. Athletes, politicians, movie stars, doctors, educators, ministers, parents and children all have one common denominator...they are all human (well, except for maybe the politicians). Our "hero" will fall from grace not because we set them up for the fall, but because they are human... flawed, imperfect, fallen and yet shaped and formed in God's image. What a paradox we truly are!
As a Father, I am charged with teaching my boys this paradox...the beautiful forms we are as humans have an imperfect glitch. It's called selfishness and it rears it's ugly head all around us every day. Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Roger Clemens, A-Rod, Jimmy Swaggert, Bill Clinton...your "hero" will ultimately have a fatal flaw. What breaks my heart is this is true of me, too. Gabe and Graham will be let down by me at some point in their lives, unfortunately more than once. The day it happens, I may not have a press conference to apologize publicly or have to testify in front of Congress...but my flaw will be aired nonetheless to the ones who matter most. What is equally as disheartening is knowing they will let me down. Will I just tell them what to do, or will I show them?
Get ready, boys it's coming. Daddy's gonna screw up!
Get ready Ryan...they will be 16 before you know it.
Know this: When you shatter expectations of those who hold you in high regard; make it right. Ask for forgiveness repent and move on. As for those who shatter your expectations? Don't make heroes out of humans! Don't expect others to fill the void and meet the need in your life that can only be filled by God. Instead, embrace what is beautiful about shattered expectations: the opportunity to respond in grace and with forgiveness and hope for the future. Respond like a hero when your hero did not.
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