What will you do with the Surprise?

Was that a beach day?

School has started up again, binders and backpacks, lunchboxes and rigid schedules are here.  Beach days are gone, traffic is back to bumper to bumper.

But what just happened?


A serious contender for a beach day?  A sudden burst of heat in the transition to fall?  It actually did hit 94 degrees two days ago.  Wow.  And a sweltering 94 at that.  I felt like pulling my children from school, canceling all meetings, having my husband call out “sick” while we pack up the car and drive to the shore.  The ocean.  The water.   Making a spontaneous beach day happen.  Today.

Why didn’t I?

I should have.  UGH.

We all know autumn and winter are coming. And while I’m sure there are blessings to every season (I’m hard pressed to find any about winter.  But surprises….. ahhhh…… they are something we need to embrace at the moment they happen.

Surprises are defined as unexpected gifts, unexpected events and are usually associated with a good feeling.  They are kind of like accidents – which are unexpected too. But accidents but don’t carry the same happy excited connotations with them.

Surprises come in all sorts of packages, like an unexpected knock on the door from a neighbor, a surprise phone call from an old friend you grew up with, or an opportunity to spend the weekend somewhere you’ve never been.

Or it could be as simple as an incredibly hot sunny day at the start of fall and a new school year.

The surprise itself is great, but more important is what we do with the surprise. We all know that some of them do not come this way again.

I’m putting on record right now, if we have another 90+ degree day in the next month, I am packing up my cooler, calling out sick, skipping school and driving to the beach.  I will let my feet touch the sand on a surprisingly hot autumn day.

Those are gifts. When they show up, let us make a promise to ourselves that we will embrace them even if the timing seems inconvenient.  After all, when we are dusting off the sand and loading ourselves back in the car, my guess is that beach day would have seemed anything but inconvenient.