I do know that a certain openness seems to surround me these days, as if my molecules had elbow room; space for the unexpected to nudge into play. I’m getting better at going with these surprising flows, acknowledging their presence, accepting their utility, and leveraging their possibilities.

I speculate that these times might just be normal times, that I’m just distracted otherwise, and could, without much effort at all, simply plug into this way of living as the new normal; the same-old, same-old endlessly writ new. But then the breakfast dishes need doing and the connection between that chore and whatever else was on my mind escapes me. Then, it seems, I escape myself.

Yesterday, Amy and I flew to Denver together. We were unable to reserve adjacent seats. I seemed destined to huddle in a back window seat, Amy two rows behind me. The DHS inspector found a typo on my boarding pass, and sent me back to the ticket counter for a corrected one. Amy passed on through security. I hadn’t noticed that my new boarding pass reassigned me a window seat closer to the front of the cabin until we were boarding. Amy slinked to the back of the bus.

I was almost the last to board the flight, and found my new seat assignment in an empty row on an otherwise packed flight. I asked the flight attendant if my wife could move up join me, and she nodded ascent. So, thanks to a typo on my reservation, synchronicity found me that aisle seat I really wanted, Amy, that adjacent window seat, and left us an empty middle seat to huddle over through the flight.

Grace stalks us all. I can’t help but believe this in my deepest soul, given my now-vast experience with grace finding me, in unlikely places, and blessing me with a satisfying plot twist in the middle of a movie that I swear somebody must have made just for me.