Life is like one big-fat-giant-corpulent-awesome-muchly anticipated surprise!

So I love surprises. A LOT! I get as excited about surprises as children do.

In fact, to be honest, I still don't sleep much on Christmas Eve because I'm so excited about Christmas morning and all the presents and fun to be had.

A friend was mentioning my love of surprises to me the other day. And then I was thinking about an institute lesson I recently had, and one of the themes from the lesson was about how God is constantly trying us to mold us into something great, and how we need to make a correction plan for our life. To expound on that concept – there are things in life we are doing/not doing that need to be modified. Going over our life and seeing those things, and making a plan of action, a plan of correction.

The next morning on the way to work I was listening to one of my favorite talks ever, "The Infinite Power of Hope" by Elder Uchtdorf.

And suddenly all of those ideas/concepts game together.

And I thought, what if I looked at life like a surprise?

We all want something – are searching for something or working towards something. The ultimate goal is exaltation of course – but there are other steps along the way: Schooling, career, marriage, family, relationships, etc. We have hope that God is looking out for us and good things will come. But sometimes that hope is hard to hold on to, and seems like nothing more than a flimsy dream.

Well, what if I related hope to the feeling of anticipation before a surprise? Like on my birthday. I know I'm going to get surprises and I love it. What if I looked at certain events in my life like that? And instead of getting upset I don't have the present now, applying the anticipation to the power of hope. The faith of knowing something good is happening, and the hope to keep a good positive attitude.

Like a surprise!

Also on an allegorical level – you know when you have a surprise for someone and you tell them you have it? The Lord has done that for us. He's told us through personal revelation, Patriarcle blessings, Priesthood blessings, etc – that he has blessings – aka - surprises - in store for us – if we just stay strong!!

Some people when you tell them you have a present for them, but the time isn't yet – they get moody and cranky – they want the surprise NOW and don't want to wait. How pathetic that seems to us… yet we do that to the Lord ALL THE TIME! We want our surprise now and don't want to wait, don't want to ENJOY the time of anticipation (preparation) until we are ready for this great surprise.

We have a sour attitude, and as the giver – who wants to give a gift to someone who is behaving so childish? You just want to say, "I told you there is a surprise!! Just calm down and enjoy the time to prepare for this gift! Enjoy the anticipation!"

And there are so many levels of gifts… just think about the progression of gifts in your life. As we age – the gifts change. We get toys, progression in age ranges – then we start to get electronics as we are ready, and it keeps going from there. It is the same with us in the spiritual sense. As we progress spiritually, the gifts change. We never know what gift we're going to get, what the Giver thinks we could enjoy or benefit from the best. And often the gift is something we didn't even want! Or know existed. But there is always a gift that is selected specifically for us, and as we progress and grow, those gifts will progress and grow with us.

In relation to hope vs faith, which is a concept I struggle with – both practicing them and in understanding how they differ, I think in this analogy, faith would be knowing you're getting the gift. And hope would be remembering that you are getting the gift, and doing whatever you can mentally and spiritually to prepare yourself to get the gift.

Here's to all the surprises waiting for us in life, and to enjoying every second of anticipation until those gifts arrive!

 Love,
Brittney