The Gift of the Unexpected

I recently finished reading Martha Beck’s best-selling memoir, Expecting Adam, about having a child with Down Syndrome.  Around the same time I received an email from a dear friend and fabulous coach, Patty Lennon, celebrating the beauty of an albino peacock.  Both these writings celebrate the gift of receiving something unexpected.

Sometimes the unexpected is construed as a good thing and the gift is obvious.  Just look at that peacock!

Other times the unexpected is seen as something bad. On these occasions we often have to look more deeply for the gift to find it.  So many times when something “bad” happens, we focus exclusively on what is bad about it that we don’t even consider that there could be a gift attached.

Regardless of “good” or “bad” I believe there is always a gift.

When my husband was diagnosed with MS, I thought that horrible things were going to happen to us. I imagined him in a wheelchair, I imagined losing our family business, our home, and just about everything else you can think of.  None of those things have come to pass.  The worry I experienced was essentially worthless.

If at that time someone had told me to look for the good in the situation, I probably would have been angry.

Now, however, I can see some of the gifts his MS has given to me.  One of these gifts is the ability to live a whole lot less fearfully.  My thoughts about his diagnosis pushed me to a point of extreme stress. It was only in getting to that place that I learned that living like that all the time was not how I wanted to live.

My husband’s diagnosis provided the catalyst that I used to transform my life. I had always been an intense worrier.  Since then I have found living that way to be not only unbearable, but unnecessary.  I now realize that I can choose to return to my worry or I can choose another way of being – happy.

His diagnosis also played a role in my choice to become a coach. Becoming a coach further enhanced my ability to deal with stress and fear. When other “bad” things have since happened, I have used what I have learned to put everything in perspective and live happily anyway. Futhermore, becoming a coach has even enabled me to help others.  I understand their fear, their pain, their stress, their worry and I can offer relief to those who are willing.

This is not to say that I wish for my husband to be ill, but neither does it mean that I discount the value of the gifts of his illness.

I challenge you to find the good in any “bad” thing in your life.  If this is too difficult, I recommend you look back on a prior “bad” experience from which you have recovered and create a list of the gifts that came from that experience.  If nothing else, I bet you can find something that you learned that may have helped you since. If you can find the good in a past “bad” experience, you can know that one day you will be able to see the good in whatever bad experience you are having now.