I never expected it

A recent Saturday morning found me hunched over a plate of bacon and french toast with a steaming cup of cheap coffee clutched in my hands. The chatter of early-risers and the clink of dishes made a girlfriend bend a little closer across the table as she spoke:

 "I have this friend, you know. And she's a believer and all. But she's really struggling with not getting married right after graduation. She keeps telling me, I just never expected this. "

As our breakfast continued (and I struggled against the carb-induced, semi-comatose feeling that IHOP never fails to deliver) that phrase kept turning in my mind. When have I thought those words? Later that day, this led to my favorite activity: the almighty list. 

I never expected

1. To discover my little sister having a seizure as she lay beside my bed. And how that night would change the landscape of our family's life ever since.

2. That I would ever stand on that huge stage clutching a Master's degree diploma. (And hoping I wouldn't trip, faint, or throw up. That was free.) 

3. To stare into a dim hospital room at a man enmeshed in countless tubes and blinking machines, thinking this can't be my Dad...

4. The sky to be so blue and the tops of the pine trees so green as I cannon-balled my body off a massive cliff over the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota.

5. That being away from my church while it suffered through the difficult split would be so heart wrenching. 

6. The melody coming from Yo-Yo Ma's cello to be that stunningly beautiful from where I sat peering through opera glasses in the balcony stratosphere. 

7. The ultrasound tech to number that many tumors and refuse to answer my "but are they cancerous?" pleas as I lay on the exam table an ocean away from home and family. 

8. My heart to feel so full as I leaned against the bamboo hut surrounded by moon-washed rice fields and listened to the impromptu Bible lesson.

9. The phone call that one of my most loyal and beautiful cheerleaders had just been found alone...having passed from this life when we least expected it. 

10. The joy to be so rich as I looked for the first time into the faces of each infant niece and nephew and saw my siblings in them.  

................................................

Quite a random collection, right? Reminds me of a phrase from the hymn Day by Day: 

Lovingly, it's part of pain and pleasure. Mingling toil with peace and rest. 

Every life has unexpected good and bad. There's pain, pleasure, toil, peace, rest...just like the list above describes. It's a mingling. But this hymn describes another reality too: 

Every day the Lord Himself is with me.

That's the shimmery thread that weaves itself in and out of all the unexpected. The one ingredient that remains undiluted through all the mingling. Because if space allowed, I would describe how I knew the Lord's presence in each of these 10 situations.

You've known it too. How He's been a Wonderful Counselor. A Mighty God and Everlasting Father to you. How you've seen Him in the unexpected and found Him to be the Prince of Peace. The Shepherd. The Fortress. The High Tower. A Sun. A Shield. The I AM ________. 

.................................................

So I give an understanding nod towards my friend as I stir more cream into my coffee refill. I get it. The unexpected throws us. But it doesn't have to. Because whether we learn to live by this reality or not, whether we feel it or not, whether it seems like enough or not, the Lord Himself is with us. In the good, the bad, or the ugly. All that we need. We can bank on that. Hope in that. Set our expectation on that.

day by day. 

Beth