No one mentions courage. The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness. Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending. More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes. She had been a child who played, ate, slept like any other child-but unlike others, wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph. Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible. This was the minute no one speaks of, when she could still refuse.