Blessings Can Blindside As Much As Curses

​We often talk about life’s ability to blindside us with hardship.

The unexpected diagnosis.

The job we thought was secure.

The forever relationship that didn't turn out to be so forever.

The silence after a phone call we didn’t know would be our last.

Curses have a way of showing up uninvited and sitting loudly in the middle of the room, demanding we rearrange our lives around them. They get our attention because they’re heavy. Because they hurt. Because they disrupt.

But lately, I’ve been thinking about how blessings can blindside us too, only, they tend to arrive more quietly. Gently. Almost shyly. Which might explain why they’re so easy to overlook.

This past week, I received two incredibly generous donations to my book campaign. Not from people I speak with regularly. Not from family members or colleagues or folks I’ve shared a meal with in recent memory. These were from friends I haven’t seen since high school. Friends from another chapter of life who, for reasons I may never fully understand, chose to show up in this one.

Quite honestly, it has stopped me in my tracks. Because the truth is, I didn’t see it coming. And maybe that’s the point.

We brace for the impact of life’s curses - we plan for them, we worry over them, we try to prevent them. But rarely do we train our hearts to expect the unexpected blessing. Rarely do we walk around thinking, “I wonder what small miracle might find me today.”

We notice the curses because they sting. But the blessings? They often require stillness to be seen. They require us to notice something generous, undeserved, and beautiful slipping quietly into our lives, and to not dismiss it as coincidence or sentiment.

Because I am certain these gifts were NOT coincidence. They arrived too perfectly timed to be so.

These donations weren’t about the money. They were about the message: that I’m still seen. That people from way back when still believe in who I’m becoming now - people who knew how far I did and still have to go. That the story I’m trying to tell might matter beyond my immediate circle.

They were reminders that sometimes in a world that often makes us want to feel long forgotten we are never really long forgotten.

Sometimes far from it.

That’s the kind of blessing that blindsides in the best way.

So today, I’m choosing to pay attention.

Not just to the hard things that scream for my attention. But to the soft, generous whispers of hope that show up disguised as old friends... or surprise messages… or quiet moments of being reminded that I'm not alone.

Life will blindside you with pain. That’s true. But don’t miss the truth that life will also blindside you with love.

And often when it does, it changes everything.