The Gift Nobody Asked For

There is a category of gift that arrives without being requested and without being wanted and without any of the wrapping that makes gifts feel like gifts rather than like something that has been placed in your hands before you had the opportunity to decide whether you wanted to be holding it. It does not come with a card that explains what it is or what it is for. It does not arrive at a time that would have been convenient for receiving it. It is not the gift that was on the list, not the provision that the prayer was specifically requesting, not the answer to the question that was being asked. It is something else. Something adjacent to what was needed, or something that arrives in the place of what was needed, or something that seems, in the initial encounter with it, to have nothing to do with the need at all, and that requires a sustained and often uncomfortable engagement with its presence before the gift character of it becomes available to be received.