One of my kids left home at sixteen to attend boarding school in another state. She seemed eager to try new things, out from under her parents' eyes. Another of our kids embarked on adulthood when we moved from California to Pennsylvania and left him behind. He was a few weeks shy of twenty. By the time the daughter who was so eager to leave had spent half a dozen years paying rent and parking tickets, and lugging her own groceries, the allure of independence had dimmed. 

"Why was I in such a hurry to grow up?" she asked me. 

Most of us look eagerly at doors in our future. Surely the unknown is preferable to what is so pedantically plain. Yet sometimes those thresholds lure us into thickets we might have been wary of, had they not been hidden behind a wall. 

The woman who spends afternoons with Benjamin is eight months into her first pregnancy. Yesterday she excitedly showed me her ultrasound images, and the professional photos of her and her husband, his broad hands on her broader belly. I had no desire to whack her excitement with stories about exhaustion, or potty talk. Motherhood is resplendent, that is when it is not ridiculously frustrating. 

A few nights ago our collegiate son spun tales about life in the halls of knowledge to his wide eyed little sisters. They listened as long as he would talk, dreaming of their own futures. But even after an hour, they had next to no idea. 

One of the books on my shelves promises to elucidate "Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married". Which is a darling sentiment. But can you know something before you know it? Can you send a periscope through the door ahead of you to comprehend the landscape? 

One of the messages that hovers behind my eyes when I begin to feel anxious about what lies ahead is to stay present to today. Perhaps it sounds naive, yet my life is a testament to the presence of One who knows the other side, and will clear the way.