“Every week brings new conversations, new wins, and new opportunities. Stay focused, stay purposeful, and keep leading with value.”

Like really expected it - and everything around you was pointing to it becoming a reality?

Sometimes we expect a conversation to go a certain way.

A dinner to go perfectly.

A plan to unfold exactly as drawn.

This past Easter, I had one set of expectations for dinner. That changed three times.

My aunt was coming, then wasn't.

Other family members decided they were.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I got the news that one of my best friends had just proposed to his now-fiancée the night before.

Not what I expected.

Better than anything I could have planned.

At the top of the year, my church assigned each member a single word - a guiding focus for the year ahead. Mine was…

Acceptance.

It sat quietly at first. But the more I held it, the more I understood what it was asking of me.

Let go of the grip. Not of the goal - but of the need to control how it arrives.

There's something about this time of year that invites that kind of reflection. New beginnings don't always announce themselves. Sometimes they're waiting on the other side of something we finally stopped holding onto.

Easter dinner wasn't what I planned. But when I stopped trying to force the experience and just let it be - it became something I'll remember.

That's what Acceptance is teaching me this year. Not that I stop caring about the outcome - but that I stop strangling it.

The best things that have happened to me lately weren't the things I forced. They were the things I finally made room for.

Maybe that's true for you too.

In peace,
Shonn