Ruining your own surprises.

Your significant other is planning to propose to you. You don't know about this. One day, he comes over to your house and asks to speak to your parents privately. You, being curious, listen to their conversation through the wall. You hear as he asks for their blessing to marry you, and his plans to propose to you. He plans to take you to the lake on an autumn's night, and kneel down. He plans to bring your friends and family to see the proposal, and he has already hired a professional photographer to take pictures.

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Or, imagine that your girlfriend is planning a surprise party for you. You do not know anything, yet you are suspicious. One afternoon, she gets an email notification on her laptop. You peak and see an email from your favourite restaurant. You realize that she hired the entire restaurant out and has just sent the DJ a list of your favourite songs to play on that night.

So now, the day of the event comes and you end up looking like this:

These scenarios lead to two points:

1. Impatience

I struggle with impatience. I always want to know what is next; what God is doing. I want it to happen now, to get into a relationship soon, to do this today.

When we wait on God to do something, He is giving us an opportunity to develop patience, because patience allows us to appreciate the following gift:

2. The gift of mystery and uncertainty

Virginia Satir once said,

It is true.

Some of us are so used to pain, we do not want to consider the prospect of happiness.

Some of us consider failure to be so familiar, we refuse to think about the possibility of success.

Some of us have had our hearts broken so many times, we fear to love again.

We hate the feeling of uncertainty, that feeling of not knowing what will happen. The feeling of your stomach churning from nervousness is unbearable. We even jump to conclusions and make assumptions, predicting our own failures to eliminate the possibility of future disappointment.

We fear uncertainty. Yet, this is the very same thing that adds to the beauty of life. Uncertainty adds mystery. Mystery is the spice of life and without it, everything tastes bland and predictable.

God is the greatest author and storyteller. The plot twists He has planned are absolutely incredible! God has a plan and it is so much better than you could imagine.

The Bible states:

The following Bible verse encapsulates this message so perfectly, because God knows exactly what we need to hear:

"He has set the right time for everything.

He has given us a desire to know the future, but never gives us the satisfaction of fully understanding what He does."

-Ecclesiastes 3:11

Enjoy the mystery and intrigue, the surprise is going to be worth it.

Patience makes the surprise sweeter.... so so sweet.