Even I know this, that there are times when it seems almost impossible to open the hands, receive the gift offered. Times when we clench our hands so tight the nails bite the skin, desperate to keep out those gifts we don’t want.

You know what I’ve discovered?

It doesn’t work.

We usually aren’t given a choice about which gifts we are given. We are only given a choice about how we will receive them.

About a month ago, I discovered the job I’d been counting on for the summer had fallen through. The job I loved, where I’d worked for two years, suddenly gone. And my future is…blank.

It’s been the most frustrating thing I’ve had to deal with in a long while. All of a sudden I’m job-hunting and resume-building and query-writing at a time that’s already crammed with term papers and exam after exam, crashing into me like gigantic roller waves on the shore. Waves that bring anxiety, wrapping slippery around me like seaweed, dragging me down, heavy slime twining around my shoulders, my ankles.

It’s all I can do to keep my feet.

I’m trying to see this as a gift.

A gift, sure, I didn’t want.

But it’s been handed me and now I have to decide what to do with it.

Do I dare receive it?

Do I dare whisper, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away…blessed be the name of the Lord?”

Do I dare not?

One thing I know: there is a plan in this, even this.

And so I pray for eyes to see, and faith to trust in the unseen, and I choose to see this as a gift.

A chance to practice the vulnerability of opening, receiving. A chance to let go of the facade of control it’s so easy to assume these days. A chance to remember who I am and who He is. A chance at humility. A chance at trust.

And no, it’s not easy. But it’s Life.