The best gifts are the ones you never even knew you wanted

So of course Christmas is next week and I still have a LOT of gifts to buy. Gift giving is not one of my strengths. I recognize this. Apparently being challenged in this area doesn't excuse you from giving gifts though, therefore a week before Christmas can be a stressful time for me. There are two reasons I hate gift giving: 1. I hate shopping and 2. I want a gift to be meaningful or perfect and I always feel like I end up settling for something when it's not.
This year, I did come up with solutions to both of these problems. To solve number 2 I decided to just....get over it.  And to fix number 1 I sent my husband shopping instead! So overall it's gone pretty well.

As I was looking through a Shopko ad tonight thinking about the last few people (ok half) on my list left to buy gifts for. One of the boys I am buying for I was told that everyone else has already bought him everything he asked for this year. That's when I thought you know, the best gifts are the ones you never even knew you wanted until you got them. If you have ever received a really great unexpected gift you know exactly what I'm talking about. When someone gives you something off your list, it's nice, you need it and you are happy. But when someone knows you enough to think of something you would like that even you yourself didn't think about, that makes you feel very special.

I think the Jewish people all had an idea of what they thought the savior would be like. I'm guessing they thought at the least that he would be taller :) and probably everyone was surprised at the way he entered the world.  But what a beautiful gift. We wanted a God to strike things down with lightening bolts and take back his world in a whirlwind. We got a God to walk beside us and speak of peace and hope and forgiveness. Who came to heal us instead of judge us, and carry our burdons. We never even knew we wanted it, but once the story played out, we wouldn't have it any other way.

There are so many gifts that I have wanted in my life already, but the unexpected have always been the best ones. The important thing to remember is that in order to get an unexpected gift it means we won't get the thing we were hoping for. Sometimes, we have our heart so set on something it's hard to let go of it, even when something even better is set right in front of us. We've all seen the Christmas or Birthday temper-tantrums when kids don't get the present they really wanted. It's not a pretty site, especially since they usually have so many wonderful gifts in front of them. I often wonder if I look like that to God, when I am complaining about something in my life I want to change or a gift I'd like to get. But if I can only trust Him, there is no one better to be in charge of the gift giving. He knows us inside and out, He knew us before we were born. Surely, he knows the perfect things that we need even when we don't even know we need them.

Hoping you find joy in all of your unexpected gifts this year!