This week the topic for the Five Minute Friday link-up post is Surprise. What is a link-up? Essentially a link-up is when you join other bloggers and write on a similar topic. You share your blog posts with one another and begin conversations via a host site. You can head over to Kate Motaung’s page to check out other entries from inspired bloggers. Here’s my five minutes of uninterrupted, unedited writing on this week’s topic:

My greatest surprise came on January 13, 2012. It was a chilly winter day. I was just settling back into my work routine which explained my high levels of exhaustion. The weekend had finally come and I found myself ready to sleep it away. I couldn’t explain the way I was feeling. In fact, I had never quite felt that way before. I was sick, but I wasn’t sick. I was tired, but I was energized. My life had become an oxymoron.

I was sitting around the long table in the staff lounge that Friday afternoon. After discussing our weekend plans I told a colleague I was looking forward to just sleeping the weekend away. I was a first year teacher and it wasn’t too off base to think that I was running on empty. However, the other teacher mentioned that she felt the same way I described when she was pregnant. And so it began…

Unable to get the thought out of my mind I stopped at a drug store on the way home. I rushed into my house careful not to show my husband what I had just purchased. I took a test and in less than two minutes the course of my life would change. I went from a newlywed new teacher to an expectant mother.

My daughter was a huge surprise. Originally we planned to wait a few years before becoming parents, but God’s plan was greater than my own.

Nine months later I would meet that beautiful surprise. She instantly became my purpose. I held her and none of my previous plans made sense anymore. I will be forever grateful that God gave me such a delightful surprise and I wouldn’t change His timing for anything.