Stop Expecting So Little From Your Life (Grace Has Bigger Plans)

The ordinary morning that opened a life I didn’t even know existed

Most of us don’t expect the future to surprise us anymore.

We plan like tomorrow will be a slightly tidier version of yesterday. Same responsibilities, same tired loops. Just better organised this time. It feels sensible. Mature. And quietly… suffocating.

You don’t wake up one day and decide to shrink your hopes.

It happens politely. Through being responsible. Through disappointment. Through that sensible inner voice that keeps whispering, “Don’t get your hopes up.”

I know that voice well. I listened to it for years.

Until one ordinary morning, at a kitchen table before the house was fully awake, hands wrapped around a mug that had already gone cold, I tried something small and deeply unimpressive. I published a few tentative words on a screen. With no guarantee it would lead anywhere at all.

Nothing dramatic happened.

For a long time, nothing happened at all. That’s when the real temptation appeared. Not failure but closing the story early. Stopping expectation. Calling it wisdom and moving on.

And that’s when the question surfaced:

What if the problem isn’t that God stopped doing new things but that we quietly stopped expecting them?

How imagination shrinks without us noticing

I didn’t wake up one day and decide to stop expecting anything new.

It happened gradually. Over years of being responsible. Then one morning, I wrote my first word online. I was sitting at the kitchen table before work. The house was quiet. The kettle had just clicked off.

I opened my laptop and typed a tiny post on Medium. The kind that feels too small to matter. I wasn’t trying to reinvent my life. I wasn’t chasing a platform. I just had this nudge: try something new.

And then… nothing.

No readers. No traction. No sign it mattered. Every day showing up to the same blank screen. It felt like talking into an empty room. Discouragement is sneaky. It doesn’t shout. It yawns.

It just keeps asking, “What did you expect?”

When discouragement finally tells the truth

Half a year in, I was on holiday in the Lakes.

The scenery was beautiful in that postcard way. Still water, soft hills, light breaking through cloud. And I felt completely flat. One morning, I sat by the window with a mug of coffee, staring out, and something honest came out of my mouth:

“This is pointless. You’re too old for this. Just go back to your ordinary life.”

It sounded mature. Responsible. Adult. And I meant it.

Most dreams don’t die from being impossible. They die from being declared finished too soon.

The decision that didn’t feel brave but mattered

On the drive home, nothing dramatic happened.

No lightning. No clarity. No five-year plan. Just something quiet settling in me. A small, stubborn decision to try one more time. Not a heroic leap. Not a reinvention. Just a thin thread of hope I couldn’t quite shake.

I didn’t suddenly believe it would work. I just stopped believing it definitely wouldn’t.

And looking back, that tiny yes changed everything. Because months later, things began to crack open in ways I couldn’t have predicted. People started reading. People started writing back. People started asking for help.

The future I’d quietly written off was still paying attention.

How a quiet habit reached further than I ever imagined

Last week, a coaching client asked me a question that didn’t fit neatly into my life.

She’s a doctor working in Madagascar, serving some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Halfway through our session, she paused and said, “Why don’t you come visit us?”

I laughed it off at first. Then felt the question land.

I was in rainy Manchester, closing my laptop, stunned that a quiet writing habit. Born years ago at a kitchen table had somehow woven me into her world.

And here’s what caught me off guard:

I realised how confidently I had once ruled this kind of life out. Not because it was impossible but because I’d decided not to expect anything like it. It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t a strategy.

It was grace, quietly widening the edges of my imagination.

Why “I am doing a new thing” is uncomfortable on purpose

Isaiah has that famous line: “See, I am doing a new thing.”

We treat it like a fridge magnet. But it’s actually a confrontation. A disruption. A question aimed straight at the chest:

Do you believe something new is still possible or have you already decided how your story ends?

The enemy here is familiarity. That dull, comforting voice saying, “This is just how life is now.” It keeps us loyal to yesterday, even when tomorrow is knocking. Faith isn’t believing everything will work out.

It’s refusing to declare the story closed too early.

Resurrection changes the story not the furniture

The whole Jesus story keeps making the same uncomfortable point.

Resurrection is not a slightly improved version of the old life. It’s not a makeover. It’s not “dead, but tidier.” It is something new. Something you couldn’t predict from the ashes. Which means the problem isn’t God’s stopped doing new things. It’s we’ve stopped imagining anything new could happen to us.

Disappointment teaches us to manage expectations. Pain keeps imagination on a short leash.

But a managed future is not the same as a faithful one.

A smaller, braver invitation than planning

As this year closes and another waits on the other side of the calendar, I wonder how many of us are already making the future small enough to manage.

Treating the year ahead as a repeat. Just slightly better organised. Slightly less tired. Slightly more bearable. The danger here isn’t pessimism. It’s over-planning. The kind that leaves no room for surprise.

So here’s the invitation.

Don’t shrink your future down to something reasonable. Don’t assume your best chapters have already happened. You are not stuck. Your life is not fixed. God hasn’t run out of new things.

Sometimes the entire story turns on one tiny, fragile decision:

Try one more time.

And maybe the most faithful thing you can do as a new year approaches
isn’t to plan harder but to let your imagination breathe again. The future isn’t waiting for your certainty.

Only your willingness.

Derek