An Unexpected Gift

I’ve decid­ed to give myself a gift this hol­i­day season.

It has­n’t held space on my Ama­zon wish list, nor have I ever writ­ten it at the top of a hand-scrawled Christ­mas list (so it’s clear­ly not a pony).

I’m fair­ly con­fi­dent it was not a pop­u­lar item on Black Fri­day, nor will it get stolen in this year’s Yan­kee Swap.

No mat­ter how much I wish and hope and dream, I know I won’t find it under the tree on Christ­mas morn­ing — not to dimin­ish the stu­pen­dous­ness of Mr. Claus, but this is a gift that only I can give.

You see, I’m giv­ing myself the gift of uncertainty.

Yes…uncertainty.

Whether by pure cal­en­dar place­ment coin­ci­dence, or oth­er­wise, the hol­i­days come with expectations.

Expec­ta­tions based on the past year’s reflections.

Expec­ta­tions on how and what you will celebrate.

Expec­ta­tions on what you will be proud of, the chal­lenges you’ll face, and what the dawn­ing new year will bring.

And after spend­ing sev­er­al hol­i­day sea­sons expect­ing a life that has sim­ply not yet hap­pened, I’ve decid­ed it’s not the right way for me to find the true mag­ic of the holidays.

So I’m giv­ing myself the gift of uncertainty.

What hap­pens when we real­ly and tru­ly release our expec­ta­tions and deep­est fears, and become open to all of the amaz­ing twists and turns that life will bring? What if we look at every day as a grand adven­ture and sim­ply cel­e­brate the fact that we are on this earth and are lucky enough to sit in the first row of our very own roller coaster?

Maybe that’s where the true mag­ic lies — in the place where instead of writ­ing the book, we jump into the illus­tra­tions and let the sto­ry unfold.

I would be lying if I told you that I haven’t spent the past 4 con­sec­u­tive Decem­bers noodling that the upcom­ing year would final­ly be the one where things hap­pened.

My health stabilized.

We got a dog.

Did­n’t count pennies.

Start­ed a family.

Trav­eled.

Gal­loped off into the sunset.

And while those are all still dreams that I will con­tin­ue to believe in with every fiber of my being, I no longer plan on mak­ing them expec­ta­tions. When I expect some­thing to hap­pen, it gives the false illu­sion to myself that I’m in con­trol of the out­come — and in this sit­u­a­tion, I’m sim­ply not…and that’s ok.

In fact, I’m giv­ing my expec­ta­tion list a total head to toe makeover, includ­ing the one in which I still dream of being an Olympic gym­nast. I’m 6 feet tall, 31 years old, and am not con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ty to somersault…so, ya know, there may be a few items to discuss.

Sure — releas­ing con­trol is ter­ri­fy­ing. We build grand, elab­o­rate blue­prints for our lives and though they rarely go accord­ing to plan, we still some­how expect them to hap­pen exact­ly as we imagined.

If you think about it, it’s absolute­ly nuts.

If things did go exact­ly accord­ing to our orig­i­nal plans, I would most like­ly be betrothed to either my 2^nd grade crush (who trag­i­cal­ly broke my heart when he moved to Pitts­burgh) or Chip — the bro­ken teacup in Beau­ty and the Beast…who, I’d like to point out, is approx­i­mate­ly 8 years old.

Come on…admit it — he is the cutest darn teacup you have ever seen in your life…and his moth­er is Mrs. Potts!

We build these expec­ta­tions in our mind of how life is sup­posed to go, and then when they fall away, we are left emo­tion­al­ly scram­bling to climb a moun­tain that is irrepara­bly falling apart. It’s exhausting.

So I’m giv­ing myself uncertainty.

I’m wrap­ping up the abil­i­ty to find peace with who I am, right here in this very moment — to find the song in the silence between what we expect and the mag­ic of the unfore­seen possibilities.

In truth, I’m let­ting my spir­it do the hol­i­day shop­ping this year.

So I choose uncer­tain­ty — wrapped in bright red paper, with a giant sequined bow.

For in a world with so lit­tle in our con­trol, I know that this mag­i­cal choice is mine.