I recently went to Cannon Beach for a wedding of some friends. I drove up and spent a couple days with the family in a beach house doing way more than I thought I would need to. Helping out with the wedding and reception set up was in my wheelhouse but about an hour and a half before the wedding the mother of the bride was working on some final things and I asked what she needed me to do and she responded, “Make these boutonnieres!” In that moment, I knew that I couldn’t say “I can’t do that.”  So, I just responded, “Yes, Ma’am.” I made the boutonnieres and the wedding went off without a hitch (except two people got hitched, but that was the whole point of the wedding in the first place).

I did not expect to be needed as a flower arranger/boutonniere maker but I am glad I was able to be present and support my friends as much as I could. I just wanted to spend some time with them and have a little beach fun. Often in our lives we find ourselves with one expectation of what a situation will require of us and the reality of that situation requires something more from us than we knew we were capable of. This was the case for me at the wedding in Cannon Beach and is generally the case for me in my work as a minister of the gospel. I find myself in situations that I expected to go one way and do not go that way at all. I find myself growing and learning in these situations, I find that these are the moments when I am challenged by God and am surprised at how capable I am in meeting that challenge with His help. I may just want a little beach fun but God has more in store for me and a better story comes out of the situation. When I surrender my expectations for a situation to God, He inevitably exceeds them and shows me more about who He is and who I am in those moments.