Expecting the Unexpected

     During my childhood, fear was all around me!  One of my earliest fears that I can recollect was waking up from afternoon naps in kindergarten.  Lying on my Power Rangers roll out nap pad was paradise!  With one hour set aside every day to enjoy this time of rest, I found fear leaving me even if just for a moment.  Too soon the lights would come on in the classroom and our teacher asked that everyone wake up and prepare for the afternoon’s lessons.  ​

     As I continued in my schooling with my parents recently divorced, I feared being apart from dad.  We moved across the country from Iowa to Alabama when I was very young and I spent most of my time with my mother and stepfather.  We soon moved back from Alabama to Iowa and the fear of keeping good grades came swiftly.  Into my teenage years, I began working!  It was instilled in me that I had to earn at a young age and learn the value of money.  One of my first jobs was as a food and beverage server for senior citizens at an assisted living community.  Every shift, I recall fearing that one particular resident might throw his soup at me because it was not hot enough…he demanded boiling soup! 
     Soon after, I feared not being ready to graduate high school because I did not know what should come next.  As a senior in high school, I started planning for college but never really felt ready or up to the challenge.  Despite this, the time to attend college came and it was truly a blast!  I quickly found a love for business there and really gained traction when I journeyed through a great management program which empowered me to learn and earn at the same time!  Fearing the “real world,” I soon graduated college and moved across the country to start a life; fear came along for the ride then too!
     After finally being on my own enjoying newly established routines in formative years of my life, I learned a key truth.  Expecting the unexpected helps with fear!  How?!...it readies a person by making them plan.  A former colleague of mine once mentioned that if I fail to plan, then I plan to fail.  With that, there have certainly been bumps in the road along the way and fear only made those experiences worse for me.  Nowadays I have an unwavering teammate (my wife) and the healthy benefit of strong planning to support me!  I would even venture to say that expecting the unexpected has freed me by insulating my life to allow for mishaps, wrong turns, and an inadvertent dead end or two!  I have often questioned doing the next “right thing” throughout life just because someone older or wiser told me to.  Instead, I have found that careful planning can open up a world where you can take calculated risks, make mistakes (always learning from them), and recover gracefully!...it is a beautiful thing and perhaps I am just a little better off because of it!