Surprise!

Satisfaction.

It’s one of the greatest feelings in the world. After a long day’s, month’s, year’s, lifetime’s worth of work, there are few things quite as wonderful as knowing that you have completed a task. Sometimes it is just nice to know that things turned out as you expected them to turn out.

Meeting expectations, however small, is fantastic.

But there is something even greater.

Surprise.

I do not mean surprise in the sense of a surprise birthday party where everyone is hiding behind couches and lamps, just waiting to jump out at you. I do not mean surprise like in a haunted house where every turn causes your heart to skip a beat. I do not mean surprise like in a pop quiz where your expectation to retain knowledge after an all-nighter is tested.

Those sorts of surprises are not good.

Those surprises require some sort of exchange.

Surprise birthday parties are all about the shock on the person’s face when everyone jumps out at them. Haunted houses are for the thrill and the scream. Pop quizes assess a teacher. Although these are all good in their own right, they do not reach surprise. If anything, there is a sense of satisfaction in these surprises.

When an exchange is expected instead of freely given, then is it really a surprise?

“The possibility of ‘no’ is what gives such charm to ‘yes.’” ~Ven. Fulton Sheen

Maybe the person the action is done to is startled, but you are not really surprised. You know that they will appreciate the party. You know they will scream. You know some students will fail, some will succeed, and the majority will fall in the middle.

The surprise I am talking about is better.

The surprises I am talking about are moments and opportuntities that come when we least expect them. Without expectation, satisfaction is overcome by joy. These surprises are little gifts from Heaven which take our lives and move them in a positive direction.

My personal favorite is the mitochondria. Not too long ago, people thought that the mitochondria’s activity was just an artifact, that it was unimportant to cell function. Then, after many unexpected results, a brave group of scientists made a bold claim that the mitochondria is important. Now everyone knows the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

There is a lot of joy from the knowledge that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

It is completely logical, and yet it was unexpected in the very beginning. 

The gift of unexpected results is powerful, and it can change lives. Even if it does not look like it at first, these gifts from God allow Heaven to reach Earth.

Everyone has experienced this sort of gift.

Sometimes it is taking a course that you had no clue you would enjoy so much. Sometimes it is meeting someone in an unlikely place. Sometimes it is a job offer that came because you were working hard and it was noticed by a customer. Whatever it may be, the experiences that we are given without any expectation are some of the most beautiful memories. They show us what truly matters in our lives and points us towards a brighter future.

These moments reveal God’s presence within our lives, whether we have brought Him in to our lives yet or not.

Back in undergrad, I had a very good friend who was an RA with me. This friend was quite the character, so I wrote quite a few stories about our times in Reslife together on my (now deleted) Tumblr account. One day, my friend asked me to send me the link to the stories. I did not want the stories to be read out of context, so I copy and pasted the posts in to a Word document and filled in the gaps with some prose. 

“I finished your story Felicity,” my friend came up to me two days later, “I really learned a lot.”

“About what?” I asked.

“God,” my friend smiled sheepishly, “I learned that He’s always there and that He’s always talking to us. Sometimes we just can’t hear it in the same way we did before. Sometimes He’s with people. I heard Him in your story.”

I was surprised.

My friend’s answer was totally unexpected.

I was expecting my friend to say they learned a lot about me, or themselves, or Reslife. I had an expectation to be satisfied with a “job well done.” I had the expectation of a shift in my friendship, and instead my friend found Jesus. Through all of our adventures, we had learned what it meant to be there for others, even if it was just by writing funny notes on their whiteboards.

My friend’s answer was not a satisfactory answer for my expectation.

However, this unexpectated answer surpassed satisfaction and brought joy in to my heart.

You see, most of these “surprises of grace” are not always huge moments. Sure, there are miracles and there are amazing opportunities presented to us. However, if every moment of God’s grace was a huge surprise, these moments would not be a surprise anymore. I would even suggest that some of us would no longer recognize the unexpected. Just like on the reality TV show, Big Brother, we would learn to “Expect the Unexpected.”

There are unexpected moments that happen all the time.

It is not until we look back for a moment that we recognize just how many unexpected results became the only logical conclusions.

Being in the Vaughan Lab is nothing short of a joke. We have unexpected results coming in left and right. From brains literally disappearing overnight to a transmembrane kinesin driving lysosomal tubulation, the Vaughan lab lives in a constant state of surprise. Even though this is somewhat expected, I will have to admit that even my most wild hypotheses still seem to come up with results that surprise me.

However, these surprises at the bench pale in comparison to the smaller surprises which have founded my life at Notre Dame.

Had I not been rejected by FOCUS and came to Notre Dame 2 years later, many aspects of my life would be absent. The graduate student who introduced me to the Catholic community would have already graduated, and I might never have become a member of the Sacramental Prep team that has brought my heart such joy. I would never have met my undergradaute mentee Shannon, and I could not imagine lab without her. My “Squad” would not know me, and I would not have the same supportive Christian community that reminds me of God’s presence at the bench.

Sometimes the greatest surprise is the progression of our souls.

And sometimes we just have to open to a few more surprises.

God loves us. That is unexpected in of itself. However, He loves us so much that He chose to send His Son to die for us. He loves us so much that He provided us with many opportunities to experience His love and Mercy.

It’s unexpected, but perhaps if we were willing to accept those little moments of His love, then we would come to the only logical conclusion.

What is that conclusion?

That we all belong to Him, and we can all come Home.