As this posts, I’m heading for the beach with my children, to what my family in Texas calls “the big water.” We’ve visited this beach for over 20 years now. The trek took much longer from Georgia. So often I longed to settle in N.C. Here we are. Little did I know our lives would be so dramatically changed. But, I did know. I knew intuitvely and I knew as one who gets some pretty intense and sometimes unfortunate glimpses into the future. Precognition. The thing about knowing ahead of time, the thing most challenging is to retain that sense of free will.
Free will’s best delights are served between the mileposts, the ones that often blur past us unnoticed as we flow along life’s crazy trails. There between the big and fateful events, we can choose our perspective, our vision, our intentions and our motivations when we’re freed of reactionary living. We can choose to reach and stroke the hair of a child, to grab him and smile, to stop and capture the image of a wildflower’s pose along lake’s quiet backdrop. We can choose to know what we want and need and what we will, what we will not allow – pretty much. We can take that second glance and then a long view of the sky’s deeper more alluring and beckoning hues. We can pick up the phone and say “I love you.” Or dig ditches. Or pull weeds. Or take that step, leave fear behind and take the next wave of education. Or vacation.
And so it is. We dance between the mileposts inevitable and the gaps whose only disparity is a field of opportunity to know and to be known in love.
J. Ruth Kelly 
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