We pray and hope and work for things that we want. We receive blessings and bad days and more blessings. Sometimes--once in a blue moon, as far as I've ever experienced--those blessings arrive *precisely* how I imagined they would. Most of the time those blessings are quite different from what I pictured. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes I utter, "That's not what I meant," and I have to dig a little deeper to find the gratitude I know I should be feeling.