Mary asked the angel, “How can this happen?

Luke 1:34

I’ve heard a lot lately about how these are unprecedented times. And yes, things seem… bad. But, honestly, aren’t all times unprecedented? Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t recall ever living a day that was a replicate of the day before. Life is just one chain of unfolding events, each day unique, each moment singular.

True, 2020 has seemed to bring one calamity after another, but even at the worst, each individual moment seems survivable.

I think we are all born with an inner myth of control over our lives. An ingrained belief that life is, by nature, predicable and will unfold according to our vision. Truth be told, I don’t know a single person who has been blessed with an existence that goes according to plan. From the first smash of the snooze button in the morning to the greater tragedies that touch us all, life just isn’t as cooperative as we would like it to be.

Control itself is an illusion. We live in a world that is not determined by our sensibilities. Throughout the course of our life, the only predictable element is the capriciousness of life. We will lose people we love. Plans will not come to form in the ways we imagined. We will have exuberant, overwhelming surprises of joy, and other times of unimaginable loss.

Mary certainly did not live her life according to plan. Heavily pregnant, engaged to a man who almost set her aside, sitting on the back of a donkey, journeying to a new town. No hotel reservations, no takeaway restaurants, no epidural or medical care, no running water.

I can imagine that each clop of the donkey’s hooves must have felt like a nail in the coffin for the life she once knew. Taking her far from family, far from the only home she had known.

Life unfolds like a twisty mountain road. Most of the time, we don’t see further down the path than the next hairpin turn. Our illusions of control and self-determination rage against this reality, and we refuse to face its inevitable truth. 2020 is unprecedented. So was 2019, 2018, 1974, all of them.

How can accepting the reality that you are not unfolding the plans of your life become a way to step into freedom? What ways can you seek to intentionally shed the heavy cloak of self-determinism this Advent?

Hear the footsteps of the donkey on the sand. Allow God’s plan to carry you into the life you hadn’t imagined…