Years ago, a good friend told me the story of her husband’s heart attack. She walked me through the morning—what happened, the call to 9-1-1, getting to the hospital, and the medical decisions that followed.

These are longtime friends of ours. We raised our babies together. We survived potty-training, we planned trips to New York together, and we celebrated milestone birthdays. Her husband belonged to the familiar, ordinary world of our lives. Hearing her describe what had happened, I could barely take it in.

And while she talked, my mind began quietly making a movie with different people in the leading roles.

Pete. Me. Our girls.

I could never handle that.

I tried to imagine myself making those calls, answering those questions, and finding my way through a day I never wanted to have. But every version my mind offered ended with me crumbling. I couldn’t find a picture of myself being okay.

Meanwhile, my friend was telling me about what actually happened.

She described doing things she had never done before. She described an uncomfortable, surreal day that somehow kept unfolding, one thing after another. And woven through her story were moments of comfort, connection, peace, and even humor.

I was so struck by that. My imagined version of her day had no room for any of those things. It held the emergency, the fear, and the enormous responsibility. But it couldn’t seem to imagine the people who would be there. The words someone might say. A moment of laughter neither of us could have predicted.

So much of the actual living was missing from the movie in my head.

I’ve thought about that conversation many times since then, especially when my mind starts rehearsing something that hasn’t happened.

Sometimes my sweet protective mind is quite specific. She wants the biopsy results. She wants to know how my parents are doing. She wants somebody I love to send a text so she can finally settle down.

And sometimes that primitive, adorable mind just wants to run through every possible disaster before breakfast. She is nothing if not thorough.

I feel such tenderness toward her now. There is so much love tangled up in all that worrying. She wants to keep everyone here. She wants to be prepared. She wants to make sure I won’t be caught off guard by something I should have seen coming.

For years, I thought I needed to get better at managing her. I worried about my worrying. I tried to figure out how to stop the stories, and then I wondered what I was doing wrong when they came back.

These days, I find myself much less interested in making her stop. Sometimes I can simply hear how much she wants an answer I don’t have.

Oh, sweet girl. You really want to know how this is going to turn out.

Of course she does.

And still, I don’t know.

There is something surprisingly restful about that little admission.

I don’t have to come up with a convincing picture of myself handling every possible future. I couldn’t picture the moments of humor in my friend’s day. I couldn’t have supplied the comfort she found. Those things arrived within a day neither of us would have chosen.

I wonder how much of my own life has arrived that way. The next thought. The person who happened to be there. The decision that became clear only when it was time to make it.

How often have I found myself doing something I had no idea I knew how to do?

A few months ago, during one of our weekly Thursday morning breakfasts, my dad unexpectedly collapsed on the floor.

I had imagined emergencies involving my parents before. Many times. My mind had been rehearsing that particular category of movie for YEARS. And yet, when it happened, I wasn’t inside any of those rehearsals. I was there, with my mom and dad.

I found myself calmly calling 9-1-1. The first responders arrived, and I led them to my dad as if I were leading workers to their assigned project. And at some point, while the paramedics were doing their work, I found myself lying on the floor beside my dad, telling him stories about Martha’s Vineyard.

That is the part I keep coming back to.

In all my imagined emergencies, I had never once pictured myself lying on the floor telling my dad about Martha’s Vineyard.

But there we were. Me telling stories and my dad listening warmly. And after the paramedics finished their work, they assured my dad that all he needed was a little rest and a little hydration. By lunchtime that day, he was back to his usual self.

When I remember that morning now, I can still feel the tenderness of being down there with him. Just his daughter, telling him stories while other people did what they knew how to do.

I hadn’t become a different kind of person. I was still Missy, with my tender nervous system and my enormous love for my dad.

And somehow, in the actual moment of an emergency unfolding, appropriate actions were taken. There was no thinking or worrying about it. Action simply unfolded. Full stop.

I was held.

I was lived.

And so was my dad.

actually arrive? And what if, when they do arrive, Life unfolds in ways that our adorable minds could never, ever predict?