The sunflowers in my neighborhood and garden have gradually begun to unfurl their yellow petals after the delicate seedlings first emerged from the earth in mid-May. The seeds, purchased in winter, were sown in late April, and soon Mother Nature’s floral suns will dot the garden, prompting endless smiles (and that’s just from me!).

While purchasing sunflowers at the grocery store becomes available many months before summer’s arrival, knowing that welcoming them into my garden to be grown from seed is available encourages me to wait so that my own sunflowers or shared sunflowers from friends’ gardens can be put on display in bouquets in the house. The wait makes the arrival all the more savored and appreciated when I see the blooms on display – a year in the making and worth the planning, effort and patience.

Whatever wish you have for your life at this moment, in whatever way you desire it to be changed or different, the journey to realizing it involves gifts received by the journeyperson along the way.

Let’s take a look at the three gifts each of us will acquire, each unique to the person on the journey and the journey itself.

1. The opportunity to refine and tailor

Take the sunflower seeds, for example. Many are sown each spring, and while carefully placed in the ground, covered with soil, and watered until they germinate, not all will spring forth as seedlings. Some will become a meal for birds, others will be crowded out, and still others simply won’t sprout for whatever reason not being viable. Time provides the space for the healthy seeds to find their way to the sun and mature fully.

Similarly, our initial dream, when we have time to gradually make steps forward, will not proceed in a straight line. We will face setbacks, we will experience doubt, we will have experiences along the way that will provide more information to help us refine our direction and approach as well as what we seek. This is all to our benefit. The time between when we set sail in earnest and when we eventually arrive at our desired harbor ensures we actually arrive somewhere we wish to land. Somewhere that leads us to experience what #2’s gift is all about.

2. A lasting appreciation

When the journey has been long, and it has often been long because what we have chosen to create, accomplish, etc., involved oodles of details, ingredients, steps, once we arrive, it is because we have stayed the course. We chose to keep figuring it out. What would have been far easier would have been to turn back, stop, or abandon the road we set ourselves upon. But no, we trusted something within us that would not let us dismiss this path. Yes, we adjusted as we went, but we never stopped our trek of chosen endeavor.

Through all of those adjustments, we grew. We are forever transformed. Which leads us to gift #3 . . .

3. An awareness of how we’ve transformed

When something whizzes by us or in front of us, a speeding car, a streak of lightning, or a batted ball, all we see is the ‘thing’ that is moving at a rapid pace; however, it is all but impossible to make out the details of that object without slow-motion detection. As it relates to our journey, when it takes time, we are given the time to realize all that we have learned, how we have evolved along the way, because we needed to in order to make progress. And because we know the journey caused the transformation, we find ourselves grateful that it did take time.

We could not have know how the journey would change us or what it would give us, but gift us it will.

When we set out on our new journey, or when we find ourselves in the middle of the journey pondering whether or not to keep going, keeping in mind that we are going to be gifted with priceless gifts for sticking with it, tweaking and polishing as we go, these are the carrots we often need to remind ourselves of in order to trust that we are on the journey that will lead us to where we will be grateful to have arrived.

With each new journey we choose to begin, recalling our past journeys and how we evolved as a result of their unfoldings provides reassurance that while each journey will be its own uniquely, we, the journeyperson, have the ability to flow with the current of what is needed, enduring the temporary tussles, until we find ourselves floating into calm waters that lead to the shore of our destination. Remaining steady during the times of uncertainty, of which there are guaranteed to be, becomes easier with each journey’s completion. That doesn’t mean the next journey will be easier, but we are more at ease as we travel and thus better able to enjoy each day along the way, rather than anxiously holding ourselves in a state of ongoing tension until we arrive. That is no way to travel, and it makes it impossible to savor what we discover and learn about the world and ourselves along the way. And it often slows our progress and limits the opportunities available as we journey.

So today, if you find yourselves pondering if it will ever be completed, that journey you have set yourself upon, or that project you are in the middle of, or whether or not you should even begin, keep in mind that a bundle of gifts await to be bestowed upon you, and, upon reflection, likely many have been already – not only the end result when you finally arrive, but revelations of what you are capable of. You are the giver of those gifts to yourself by saying yes to the journey’s beginning and continuation until you arrive, whenever that may be. But it will be far sooner if you begin today.

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