Each Day Holds a Surprise

Each day holds a surprise. Yet most of us pass through our days half-asleep, wrapped in the predictable fabric of routine, convinced that what has been will simply repeat itself again. We wake, we work, we return, we rest. And in this seemingly endless rhythm, the soul can begin to forget that life is not a machine but a mystery. It does not unfold in a straight line but breathes with the rhythm of surprise, offering us gifts we did not anticipate and could not have arranged for ourselves. The surprises of the day are like secret doors hidden in plain sight—unlocked only by a spirit of expectancy.

To expect surprise is not to demand pleasure or to insist upon joy, but to live with a quiet openness, a gentle readiness for what may come. It is to walk into the morning as one might enter a sacred grove, not presuming to know what awaits, but allowing the air itself to speak. A soul that expects surprise leans into the day with curiosity, as though the world might at any moment lift the veil and reveal a hidden truth, a beauty, or even a sorrow that carries its own strange blessing.

So much of the poverty of our inner life comes from forgetting how to expect. We live in a culture that has trained us to manage, to control, to schedule, to plan. We have calendars filled with lines and lists, yet these maps are drawn only from the surface of things. Beneath the lines, the day lives with a vitality of its own, humming with the unknown. To live fully, we must allow the day to exceed us. We must dare to receive what we did not foresee.

And yet, when the surprise arrives, it may not always come dressed in the garment of joy. Sometimes it enters as sorrow—unwelcome, sharp, unraveling. A letter with heavy news, a friendship that falters, a silence that lingers where once there was laughter. These moments, too, are surprises, though we rarely name them so. The first impulse is to resist them, to ask: why this? why now? But if we learn to trust even these darker surprises, we may discover that they, too, carve out new places in the heart. Sorrow hollows us, and though the pain feels unbearable, that very hollowing makes space for a deeper tenderness, a compassion that could not have existed before.

Joy and sorrow are not opposites but companions in the landscape of the soul. Joy expands the heart outward, teaching us to dance with gratitude. Sorrow deepens it inward, teaching us to rest in humility. Both are teachers, both are surprises, both open new rooms in the mansion of the heart. To expect the day’s surprise is to welcome the possibility of both—without fear, without clinging, without trying to edit the script of life according to our preferences.

When we live this way, something extraordinary begins to happen. The surprises of life, whether gentle or searing, begin to weave us into a larger story. A sudden conversation with a stranger, a kindness offered at just the right time, a chance encounter that blossoms into a friendship—all these remind us that we are part of a greater fabric of belonging. Even sorrow, when carried with honesty and grace, opens pathways of kinship. We discover that others, too, have walked through valleys of shadow, and in sharing our burdens we come closer to one another.

Perhaps this is one of the most profound gifts of surprise: it teaches us not only who we are but who we are together. Each surprise, whether joy or sorrow, carries the possibility of communion. It creates a threshold where the solitude of one soul meets the solitude of another, and suddenly we find ourselves less alone. In this meeting, we begin to celebrate our shared humanity—not as an abstract idea, but as the real and fragile bond that holds us in place in this world.

To receive each day’s surprise, then, is to practice a form of reverence. It is to treat the hours not as burdens to be endured but as sacraments to be received. The morning, the afternoon, the evening—each holds its secret. Each has something to offer that no other day, no other hour will ever repeat. This day is unrepeatable. It has never been before; it will never be again. Its surprise is its signature, the one-time gift it longs to place into our hands.

So let us not be afraid. Let us open the shutters of the heart and allow the light of the unexpected to fall where it will. Let us stand in the threshold of the day as one stands at the edge of the sea—unsure of what the waves will bring, but willing to be touched by their rhythm. And when the surprise comes—whether it lifts us into joy or bends us into sorrow—may we receive it with the trust that even this moment is shaping us, enlarging us, preparing us for deeper love.

For in the end, the day’s surprise is never meant to isolate us but to awaken us. It invites us to grow more supple in spirit, more tender in heart, more ready to greet the stranger and embrace the friend. It asks us to live with less control and more wonder, less fear and more trust. It asks us to be present to life as it arrives—unbidden, unscripted, yet always bearing within it the possibility of grace.

And perhaps, when we come to the close of the day, whether we end it with laughter or with tears, we may look back and say: yes, I have lived today. I did not close my eyes to its surprise. I let it open me, and I am larger for it. In that openness, the heart finds its truest rhythm: to welcome, to be surprised, to belong.

BLESSING FROM MY HEART TO YOURS

May we awaken each morning with a sense of expectancy, not clinging to what we already know, but ready to receive the mystery that the day quietly carries within it. May we have the courage to welcome surprise, not only when it comes clothed in joy but also when it comes veiled in sorrow, trusting that each has its own gift to offer the soul.

May we allow sorrow’s surprise to deepen our hearts, carving out spaces where compassion and tenderness may take root. And may we allow joy’s surprise to lift our spirits, reminding us of the radiance and laughter that still flow like a hidden spring through the world.

May we live with the openness of those who do not fear the unexpected but who greet it as a sacred messenger, sent to enlarge the rooms of the heart. May we learn to see, hear, and feel the subtle ways the day speaks to us—through the voice of a friend, the silence of a moment, the glance of a stranger, or the whisper of wind in the trees.

May the surprises of our days draw us beyond ourselves into deeper kinship with one another. May they remind us that we are not solitary travelers but companions on the same road, joined by the mystery of being human together. And may these moments of shared surprise give us courage to trust in the goodness of life, to celebrate the fragile beauty we hold in common, and to receive each day as a threshold of grace.

I love You,
An