If you watch marketing, especially that which is promoting something you would enjoy – something that would incite pleasure – the appeal comes in the form of reward: You Deserve This.

The weekends away without work, the delights of delicious foods, a good night’s sleep under an expensive but beautiful velvet bedspread: they all arrive to us packaged as rewards. You deserve this.

Because I’m firmly placed at the intersection of the health/wellness and spirituality industries, I have some concerns.

To imply that because of *this* (whatever *this* is), we deserve something, also implies that there are moments, people, and situations that do not deserve that something. A reward means that goodness is attached to behavior. Your worthiness becomes something that is earned.

Such a line of reasoning, based on the notion that there’s an authority deciding on your worthiness, also leaves you, the earner, constantly wondering: is this enough? Is this enough to get the prize? If I just… X, will I finally be enough to get… Y?

It’s that wondering, that constant, pervasive concern that you aren’t enough that will keep you on the treadmill of earning, earning, earning. But here’s the real punch in the gut: everything you earn won’t be enjoyed in the same way. Its flavor will be tinged with entitlement.

As long as we operate in a scarcity mentality, that the world is a big pie and we have to elbow our way to the biggest piece, our striving will be met with rewards that will never feel enough to satisfy.

The business will never be successful enough. The house will never be big, clean, and full enough. The marriage will never be fulfilling enough. The kids…. (oh, goodness, let’s not talk about what happens when there are kids involved.)

This is the awakening that turns the poison of entitlement into banquet of thanks.

Jedidiah Jenkins, Like streams to the Ocean

I think this is why Paul wrote to the Ephesians that it is “by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that on one can boast.”

I won’t dispute that actions have consequences and each decision we make will take us in a particular direction, potentially closer or further away from something we ultimately want for our lives. Our own volition is a gift.

And that’s the thing: it’s all a gift. All of it. Not just the “prize” at the end, the thing you think you earned because you happen to find pleasure in it. The path leading you there is also the gift. Each step toward it: gift. gift. gift.

That cookie you eat after a 5-miler may taste extra sweet, but it’s not because you paid the 5-mile price. Those miles were their own gift. The cookie is grace upon grace.

When you free yourself from living as if it all has to be earned, you’ll find the grace in the 5 miles. Just because you don’t enjoy it as much doesn’t mean it’s not a grace. It’s like I tell my kids when I make a dinner that’s anything other than pizza: just because this isn’t your favorite dinner doesn’t mean it’s not a good one.

We’re not living amid a big balance sheet of life, computing debits and credits and hoping to end our lifetime in the black. Each experience in this world is a credit. We enjoy some credits more than others, and that’s ok.

Pleasure – enjoying something for what it is – isn’t a reward. Rest isn’t a reward. Renewal isn’t a reward. These gifts were given before you set out to give efforts. These are grace, upon grace, upon grace.

As a fan of Hozier’s music, I was much aghast to a song on his recent album, No Plan. I sent it to my friends telling them of my mixed emotions. I would skip past the song when listening to the album much the same way I couldn’t quite come to look at the cut on my hand because deep down I knew I would have to go get stitches and I just didn’t want to deal with that today. Or ever.

Most of my early learning and conditioning with religious thought taught me that God had a plan for my life. This idea was meant to bring great ease into my life, that I could trust the overall direction and that I would be cared for.

However, that idea didn’t bring me comfort or joy. It brought a deep sense of anxiety. There is a plan and I must follow it or I risk messing up everything God as already aligned for me. Don’t screw this up, Michele. Pay attention, Michele. Do the right thing, make the best decision, don’t get off this path that God as made because it’s on this path that you’ll land where you need to be.

With time, growth, lots of children, and the help of a good therapist, I’ve begun to unwind this One Correct Way way of thinking. And most recently, I must share, the greatest sense of peace and comfort came from the most unlikely of sources: a chapter on Darwin.

While I wasn’t reading his divisive work, I read a chapter on the way Darwin loved orchids and the adaptations of orchids. He discovered of the way particular plants possessed something similar to a nervous system to help them find the nourishment they needed. I’m sure the original work was as dry as that paragraph reads, but Oliver Sacks (The River of Consciousness) unpacks what Darwin’s work did for him and millions of science-enamored minds. He writes, “evolutionary theory provided, for many of us, a sense of deep meaning and satisfaction that belief in a divine plan had never achieved.”

As a person in One Right Way Recovery, connected to this Divine Plan thinking, I appreciated Sack’s observation. Especially because he expounded on why this idea adaptation brought him such ease: each human (and animal and plant) possesses within itself the wiring and disposition for change. We are created (and I chose that word with intention) with the ability to shift, adapt, and change.

And as I look around our current world riddled with fear and anxiety of the unknowns related to a virus, the economy, and how families navigate situations, I see the way Master Plan thinking is limiting us.

We turn to the Governor (who I didn’t vote for but will every election moving forward) at 2PM to hear how he’s going to move us through this. And if not the Governor, we’re asking it of our superintendents, our bosses, our parents. Of course, part of the gig of leadership is to provide direction, counsel, and a way of doing things. I’m not telling these folk that now is a good time to take a vacation.

What we tend to ask of our leadership is to make a plan that we can follow to the end of all this that will ensure success. But much the way I Have A Plan for You Thinking spiraled me into anxiety, this idea that one government, school, or work official can organize our way out of this will likely lead to many of us following the rules but loosing sight of the destination. Fear of doing it wrong will make our path very tumultuous.

What Sacks – and Darwin – offered me this morning wasn’t in opposition to a plan. Let’s have a plan, a set of best practices, a way of organizing ourselves. But the hope isn’t in the plan, it’s in the wiring. It’s not just how it’s brought together, but by what it uses to be successful: The human ability to adapt and change in order to survive.

There’s a seed of divinity written into every living organism that allows us to sense what we need, and change us to find ways to meet those needs.

Instead of engaging our energies to perfectly execute an unknown plan, we have the freedom to listen deeply to what we need and creatively explore the ways we can meet those needs.

I actually believe we’re all going to be okay. I believe it will be extremely challenging, and a hard-fought success. But it will be okay. And my faith doesn’t come from it aligning with a Master Plan. It comes from believing in what the Master Planner put into each of us: the ability to change and adapt to challenging and even threatening situations.

Our best leaders aren’t going to micromanage us into submission. They’re going resource us for making the best decision. They’re going to remind us of our abilities and support our efforts. They’re going to show up for us each day and they’re not going to blame the plan, they’re going to adapt. They’re going to ask us one million times “what do you need?” and they’re going to believe in your and my ability to respond honestly so that we can adapt to those needs.

I do believe it, the verse that makes a promise about God’s plan: a plan to prosper and not to harm. The direction of the universe is bent toward goodness. And while struggle may exist, that was never the plan or the design. What was written into the blueprint was an organic means of change as the circumstances require it. We are able to find new ways of flourishing.

Here’s to it.