Take your head out of the bucket

A lot happens on the road of life. Especially what we least expect.

We see and experience a lot of different places, people and things in life.

Sometimes we pass and miss a lot.  

Last week my family and I went on vacation. It was our first real go-somewhere vacation not connected to a work related trip. It was provided for and enabled through Grace. It was blessed and agreed to with Courage.

We afforded three nights of hotel stay-overs through the points generated by my frequent overnight accommodations at a certain hotel chain, by the travel I do for work. The dreaded nights alone without my family and the innumerable prayers for safety rewarded us with a blessing of affordability. This was Grace.

My groom doesn't like to travel anywhere that isn't within his immediate purview and every time we travel anywhere new, it means that he steps out of his comfort zone. He was willing to go somewhere different. This was Courage.

I'd shared with my groom memories I hold of a certain place where I vacationed with my parents as a younger me--a land of lighthouses and white sandy (and also rocky) beaches--and he suggested that maybe we should go.

My groom was willing to See what I remember and long to share with him and our Boy. He looked forward to our plans.

But our trip didn't go according to {our} plan. And for perhaps the first time in over three decades of living, I really, truly understood that anything is possible, and our plans may not come to be.

Different. Happens.

The entire East Coast was bracing for a hurricane of mass proportions and no one quite realized the aftermath would affect our surrounding area quite the way it did. Flooding caused roads to close--For. Days.

Instead of canceling our vacation, we decided to go Some. Where., and so we *courageously* surrendered our plans to seize a *different* plan.

We became excited for Different.

And though we all accepted the change in plans--this *different*--Fear followed us, lurking in the back seat.

Driving down the highway, my son spent most of the time with his head in a bucket--out of fear. He's battled car sickness for a long time and lately he hasn't been able to travel 20 miles within our immediate area without suffering from extreme nausea.

The Boy was afraid of the six hour ride. He missed a lot of our trip with his head hanging in the bucket. Beauty passed us and the Boy missed it, though he never actually needed to.

Now, several days later, I picture that Boy with his head in the bucket. I'm thinking about how life *whirls and twirls* around us and we {often} miss It.

When I spend my days pitching a fit with remorse that we didn't get to that land of lighthouses and white sandy beaches, I am keeping my head in the bucket and missing out on *different.*

Different isn't what we expect It to be. 

A lot of the time Different makes us uncomfortable, and maybe even angry.

What appears to be dark and gloomy, and when the waters appear to flood in what appears to be a monumental disaster...

Beauty. Blooms. 

Accepting Different takes us to a new level and helps us to See something we never would have imagined.

Possibilities are invited with *different.* 

When we surrender our wants, our plans, our comfort, and seize something new--and well, *different*--we are freed from our limited expectations, to grow.

As it turns out, our decision to go somewhere else was to a place just right for a nearly seven-year-old boy. It was filled with sports and fun, and though it wasn't at all what I imagined, it is what I will likely remember forever.

There's more Different about to happen in my family's life. And lately I've been doing a lot of subtle talking about *different* and how it frees me to See.

And so, I {tentatively} surrender the Fear and trust in the Different.

There's Grace waiting for us to surrender Fear to Courage. 


Will you surrender fear and courageously take your head out of the bucket?
See. Different. 

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