She appeared to me in a vision. A Roman warrior. Female, of course. Standing upright in a chariot, combat gear catching the light, jaw set, eyes forward. In her hands, dozens of tethers, raw leather that looked worn but strong. Each one connected to a horse, many of them, pulling her quickly forward. Snorting, muscled, ferocious animals straining against the leather, hooves churning up dust and rock. The warrior’s job wasn’t to stop them. It was to hold them. To let them run and to run with them, and to know with every thundering stride that one bad rock, one wrong turn, and the whole magnificent thing would flip.

I looked to my left and to my right. My tribe was there. All of us careening forward together.

I have been that warrior. I have also been the chariot mid-air.

The two days before I boarded this flight were not mine. My head muse, the one who lives somewhere behind my left eye and occasionally intervenes on my behalf, decided it was time. She stepped in and dumped gallons and gallons of paint on me. Color everywhere. Pages and pages of writing. Thoughts, ideas, new storylines tumbling out faster than I could catch them. In between, I was on endless calls with Verizon tech support in India, China, and who knows where else, trying to untangle a problem that had no business being as complicated as it was. And somehow in the middle of all of that, I was still producing. Almost to a manic. Tethers in both hands.

So I suppose I shouldn’t wonder why today she’s a little tired.

I’m on a plane to Minneapolis. Choral conference. The work has been piling up and I knew, sitting down in my seat, that I had this window. Time to write. Time to reflect. Time to deep dive into the pile. My muse had other plans, which is to say she had no plans at all. She clocked out. Left a note on the door: “Gone fishing. Figure it out.”

And the strangest thing happened. I didn’t panic. I observed.

The man in the seat next to me is named Matthew. He’s on his way to Missoula. He laughed gloriously at every one of my jokes, every quip, and in his laughter I felt something I can only describe as a love glimmer. A small warm light. The kind you didn’t know you needed until it was right there.

Earlier, when they asked me to hold back so the first class stewards could finish delivering coffee to their passengers, I didn’t sigh. I didn’t check my phone in pointed irritation. I exchanged pleasantries with the flight attendant who delivered the command. Made a joke (because it wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t making a joke). You owe me a cup of coffee, I told him.

He remembered.

A little while into the flight he tracked me down in coach. Extra cup with a fancy biscotti on the side. A treat. Debt paid.

And can I just say how good that cup of coffee tasted, sitting back in the cattle class.

The horses are still there. They’re always there. The tethers are still in my hands. But somewhere between the chaos and the quiet, between the paint-soaked pages and the hum of this engine at altitude, I remembered something the chariot warrior already knows.

You don’t have to be running at full thunder to be moving forward.

Sometimes you let the muse rest. You talk to Matthew. You accept the cup of coffee. You feel the glimmer.

And you stay in the now, just long enough to know you’re still holding the reins.