With certainty ought to come confidence, a bold exercise of freedom. Why then does it often feel more like we’re bluffing rather than actually enjoying that confidence? Why does freedom seem so burdensome? At times it may feel like too much is left up to our freedom, and with this comes bewilderment. Other times it may feel like too little is left up to our freedom, and with this comes discouragement. In either case there arises fear of failure and hesitancy to act. The key to confidence, then, lies in identifying our true freedom and working within its bounds. Ultimately, knowing how freedom is framed helps to understand how freedom is exercised, both in the ordinary day-to-day and in the more extraordinary moments of life.

What does it mean to be free? Many people associate their freedom with independence or with license to do what they want. My freedom ends where your freedom begins. With this understanding, however, the influence of others is seen as a limit to freedom. I am only free to the extent that I set myself up against family, nation, Church, or whomever. Otherwise, I am just another follower. It’s in this spirit that many seek to define themselves as unique or special according to their own lights. The question arises: What if I don’t know exactly who I am or what I want? What if the encouragement “You be you” leaves me perplexed rather than impassioned? According to a Christian worldview, you needn’t fear. There is freedom to be found within the limits of your life.

In the traditional understanding, freedom is just as much received as it is exercised. In reality, much of who we are is visited upon us. Take the example of family life. You were born to these parents at this time and place. You were taught a particular language and raised with certain beliefs. By nature and nurture, you have this temperament and this personality. As a result, you are better suited for this work or this vocation. It might seem like this passivity compromises your freedom, but such is not the case. It is, in part, the source of your freedom.

Freedom, we said earlier, is about being a virtuoso human being, one wholly in possession of his humanity. The free person knows his goal in life and will not be deflected from that purpose. In his pursuit of the goal, there are some things that others choose for him and some things that he chooses for himself. Whether those choices come from without or from within is less important; what is more important is that they shape his pursuit of the goal.

The givens of life do not detract from our freedom. They situate it. By ordering us toward a particular version of the good life, these givens establish how we are to flourish. At a certain point, you learned English. That continues to shape how you see reality and how you communicate. You live in the twenty-first century. You won’t ever work as a newspaper crier, but you will have to be at least a little tech savvy. And if you were baptized, you have an indelible mark on your soul. That gives you a permanent share in the priesthood of Christ tending always to the worship of God. Before you ever choose, you are fixed as this person in this setting with this life. These factors define what it means for you to live well. Accordingly, you’re free to choose what lies within your power, and you needn’t bother with what doesn’t.

This Christian understanding of freedom may sound unreasonable to those who encounter it for the first time. For instance, what if one’s setting is outdated or limited or prejudiced? Shouldn’t it be called into question? Perhaps. At times, one may have to rise above his or her setting or even reject it altogether, but this isn’t the default position. The default position is to learn from it and work within it, because there may be real wisdom in what we receive.

The givens in life afford us access to the wisdom of others. They initiate us into a more broadly reasonable life at work in our family, nation, Church, and so on. By welcoming the influence of a childhood mentor, a family tradition, or an ecclesial law, we inherit something of their freedom. By looking to our forebears, we draw strength to choose the kind of life we know to have been good for them. For instance, plenty of young people enlist in the armed services at the age of eighteen. How do they adequately weigh the consequences of that choice? Well, often they don’t; but perhaps they don’t always need to. A nation needs good soldiers, and it’s good to serve one’s country. If a father or an uncle served before, that may be enough to fix a boy’s mind on it for himself. That’s not unreasonable. In fact, it’s free.

To choose in this way means to broaden the horizon of choice. Prudence isn’t limited to the steps of counsel, judgment, and command. It’s at work in our genes, in our language, in our worship. We take part in a reasonable culture in which all kinds of relationships and institutions play their part. With this comes the relief that we don’t always have to be anxiously, intentionally, optimally rational. We live the way we do, dress the way we do, believe the way we do in large part because we are borne on by the reasons of others, by our part in the whole. And that is perfectly reasonable. So, why did Christen become an accountant? In part because her father is an accountant. That’s a good reason. Why did Regina join this parish? In part because that’s where she lived. That’s eminently sane.

The secular age would have you believe that reality is wholly unintelligible, that life only has the meaning you give it. To think so is tempting, especially as traditional institutions and narratives break down. But there is no need to invent the meaning of our situation, and to try to do so is counterproductive, even anti-Christian. Life isn’t something that we make up. It’s something that we receive. God put you here and now, with this personal, familial, and societal history. He isn’t surprised that you are limited and that your reasoning is limited. Not only is that permissible, it’s intended. Your freedom is engaged by embracing it.

This idea of freedom, as both choosing and receiving, might upset our notion of what it means to be in control. One might protest: “If I don’t choose it, then I don’t want any part of it!” But such a spirit runs completely counter to the logic of creation and redemption. If we are honest, we have received everything from the hand of God: “What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” (1 Cor 4:7). Before the givenness of life, the Christian response is not one of dissent, but one of consent, even abandonment.

This idea of consent is premised on a basic truth: God loves you and provides for you. Some things he gives you through your exercise of choice. Some things he gives you through a choice that goes before you. Whether by choosing or receiving, though, God is loving and providing.

God did not create you to no end, for he makes nothing in vain, and you can rely on him to supply you with what you need to flourish. What is more, God has created you for a meaningful pursuit within this reality. This is the setting in which your flourishing is to be found. Admittedly, it’s one marred by evil, but God would not have permitted that evil were he not able to draw from it some good. What you need to flourish is not to be discovered by going over, under, or around your present circumstances. Rather, it is to be found in willingly embracing them. Real life is not elsewhere. It is here and now.

Imagine that you are a single mother. Your husband recently passed away, and you have two small children. You really want your children to mature in their faith and persevere in their practice of it. You have also heard that having a churchgoing father is the single best predictor for post-collegiate church attendance. What should you do? Remarry for the sake of the children? Try to play the role of the father yourself? Despair entirely? Freedom in this situation amounts to consent: You can only be the children’s mother, so be their mother. It may be harder for your children to come to know and love the faith given the loss of their father, but that’s beyond your control. You are only free to be you — a good woman and good mother — once you accept that.

So, what then are you responsible for? Saint Augustine prays, “God give what you command and command what you will.” God will supply you with what you need for the life to which he has appointed you, a life crafted in the depths of his wisdom and animated by his boundless mercy. Its unfolding will look different than that of the next person, but you can embrace it with the confidence that it is good and that it is yours. Only you are able to reveal what God’s grace can do in the here and now of your life. By offering your consent to life as God gives it, you become a monstrance of his peculiar love and announce something unique of his divine life.

Only you are able to reveal what God’s grace can do in the here and now of your life.

At the heart of his will for your life, you have real freedom. Since God’s eternal plan includes you and your actions, you may be tempted to think that your life is predetermined. But his plan is so powerful that, not only does he cause you to act, he causes you to act freely. God’s creative power does not force our hand or act violently on our liberty. He moves us strongly and sweetly in a way more interior to us than we are to ourselves. He makes our acts to arise naturally and organically as the fruit of our choice. So, yes, God sees your future which is eternally present to him, but he sees it as something he brings about in and through your act of free choice. In accounting for everything, his plan accounts for (and makes possible) your very contribution.

How do you contribute? By playing the hand you’re dealt and playing it as well as you know how. Your life may not seem the best, but you can be confident that God’s plan is good. The best life for you is the life that God actually gives. It is the product of his love, and he loves you quite a bit — more than you love yourself, more than you could ever imagine. The hand you’ve been dealt is a hand dealt by love. God wants you to be happy more than you do. He wants you to be a saint more than you do. With this in mind, it’s possible to play your hand with a kind of joy and, in the playing of it, to become good. God is not waiting for you to mess up. He is excited to see you and to cause you to live beautifully, truly, and well.

So how then do we exercise this freedom? The last four chapters have each already responded to this question in one way or another. Here, we’ll limit what remains to some very practical advice, treating first the ordinary and then the extraordinary exercise of our freedom.

In an ordinary choice, begin by consulting your desires. Who are you, and what do you really love? It’s good that you want to do God’s will, but how does his will take root in your humanity? Take your cues from what draws you. It’s like choosing at a diner. You have a huge menu before you, so you start with the normal questions: What have I been hankering for? Am I thinking sweet or savory? Do I want to bring home leftovers for dinner? Do I want to feel good about my life afterwards or like I have a rock in my stomach? It’d be strange to ask what God wants you to order and leave it at that. You answer that question by thinking virtuously and picking something. Because desire is God-given, you can trust it, and as you grow in grace, you can trust it more. Note: There’s no sense in choosing something more difficult if it’s not for you. God isn’t interested in what you think is hard. God is interested in what you love. The principle of merit is charity, not exertion. He created you and redeemed you for love, not for drudgery. So, tend toward what you love and, as you do, your virtuous inclinations will take more definite shape.

God isn’t interested in what you think is hard. God is interested in what you love.

At this stage, you will always be dealing with mixed motivations. “Okay, I want the number four, but there’s no way I’ll finish it. That being said, I can take the rest home. Also, he’s paying, so there’s that, as well.” Because we are fallen people with fallen powers, we can’t expect to summon perfectly pure motivations at a moment’s notice, as in: “I will choose the number seven because it is dietetically balanced, perfectly proportioned, and eminently suited for my day’s work of ministering to the poor.” This side of heaven, it just doesn’t play out that way. And yet, even though our inclinations are weak and wounded, we can still manage to choose well. If you live your life virtuously, your motivations will be purified, but only with time.

Having consulted your desires, next weigh your options. Some options are evil and the choice of them sinful. Obviously, those are to be avoided. Here the moral law helps by giving clear indication of what’s out of bounds. There are plenty of good options though, and we’re genuinely free to choose among them. You are in search of what is good for you, here and now, given the concrete and particular circumstances of your life. It may seem holier to make a holy hour, attend Mass, pray the Liturgy of the Hours, and serve with the Missionaries of Charity every day, but that mode of life is not holier for a project manager during the busy season or a young parent currently potty-training the twins. The holy thing is what makes you faithful, charitable, and generally virtuous in your real life. Be confident that God drew you into your vocation because it’s the best way of making you holy. What you’re after is the good option for you, an option which may not always look how you imagined it would, but that is, in fact, good. Only your real life bears grace, not the life that might have been. There are all sorts of paths that lead to sanctity. Take yours.

Also, when weighing options, don’t overthink it. Fixating on a choice can be counterproductive. In the discernment of vocation, for instance, you sometimes hear the following: “I would like to marry this man. I hope we will be engaged soon. Sometimes, though, I worry that I haven’t discerned sufficiently. Religious life seems like it would be really burdensome for me, even unpleasant. Maybe, though, that’s just what I need.” It’s this type of overthinking that gets us all bound up. If your head causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you (See Mt 5:29-30, sort of). Often enough, you know what to do. Trust yourself. God does.

Next, do the thing. Prudent thought should lead to prudent action. Some may be tempted to second guess or defer to another day. Others might be tempted to launch into action without taking counsel or making sound judgments. Virtue is not too much and not too little. Virtue, Aristotle writes, is in the middle. It’s in the mean. Think it through, then see it through. If you’re an indecisive person, you might practice making small decisions within a set limit of time, whether it’s choosing a new show or selecting a rest stop to gas up. Limit your options to quell your fears. You could also try choosing the thing you’re immediately drawn to in order to see what happens. You may be pleased to discover that your instincts are good. If you’re an excessively decisive person, practice deferring to someone else’s judgment from time to time or asking for input from a friend or family member, even if you feel like you don’t need it. Try to take their advice every so often. You might also make small journal entries of decisions and read them after a few weeks to see how your original confidence has matured.

Finally, assess how you did. Often, we think about prudence at work before the act and in the act, but prudence is also at work after the act in the work of assessment. That assessment needn’t be overly complicated. How did it go? Were you pleased with the result? What did you learn? Whatever you do, though, assessment shouldn’t be reduced to simple self-accusation or self-justification. It’s not just about whether you got it right or wrong. It’s about growing from your successes and failures. The hope is that, by this practice, you cultivate self-knowledge and move in the direction of genuine self-acceptance. Apparently, for better or worse, this is who you are. With self-acceptance, then, comes self-transcendence. When you really know who you are, you are less surprised by your failings and weaknesses and better disposed to offer them to God.

In the work of assessment, it can be easy to get lost in our own heads, and so it’s good to have recourse to friends. Friends encourage us in the virtuous life: They both model it for us and talk us through it. They widen and deepen our insights. They see things that we don’t. We’re often inclined to give the best interpretation of our own actions and the worst of others. Friends aren’t so easily fooled. Knowing us and loving us as they do, though, they are able to communicate the truth in a way that is both candid and gentle. If you find that your friends are reticent to offer their advice or correction, consider giving them your explicit encouragement to do so. While their input may be painful at times, it is a great help to growth in prudence.

We can also enrich our assessment by reading good literature. Prudence, we have said, comes from experience. When we read literature, we share in the author’s experience of human life. While engrossed in good literature, we live in the characters’ heads, partake of their action, and see succinctly how their lives play out. Within the arc of the plot, we are able to draw connections between their activity and destiny, their choices and their flourishing. By reading good literature, we can profit from rich insights into humanity, and those insights can transform our own approach to human life.

Human life itself has a kind of narrative quality. Our lives are stories in the telling. Part of our energies are devoted to living that story. Part of our energies are devoted to interpreting it. By interpreting it well, we are empowered to live better. Self-reflection, the company of friends, and the riches of literature are all part of this work. Each helps us to better consent to the story that God is recounting in us, rather than searching idly for a different tale. In the end, you can be confident that the story is good, for it is yours, and God has chosen to tell it through you and you alone.

It’s one thing to be confident in the ordinary day-to-day of prudent living, but what about the extraordinary times which seem entirely beyond us? Regardless of how prudent we are, there are bound to be certain decisions that leave us baffled. Say you work at a pharmaceutical company on the HR side. You don’t always understand the research side, but you’re beginning to think that some of the current projects are a bit dubious. That being said, you’ve just had your third child in five years, and things are a bit tight financially. It would not be a good time to change companies, especially with the industry in its current state. What should you do?

When thinking through a concrete choice, we ordinarily rely upon our human wherewithal. We consult experience (memory), ask advice (docility), weigh principles (understanding), intuit consequences (shrewdness), and reason it out (reasoning). Sometimes, though, that human wherewithal just isn’t enough. The choice is just too big, too difficult, too obscure. In these moments, we may feel despondent. Curiously enough, though, it is in these moments that God is nearest. Recall what was said earlier of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. When the virtues are stretched to their limits, the gifts come to their aid. When the virtues falter from human deficiency, the gifts lift them to a divine sufficiency.

When prudence, in particular, comes up against obstacles, the Holy Spirit intercedes through the gift of counsel. Counsel supplies us the extraordinary wisdom of God’s prudence, one far surpassing the ordinary wisdom of our own. You can think of prudence as a young physician who is attending a patient with strange symptoms, symptoms that don’t conform to any diagnosis known to him. This physician may know a great deal, he may be the brightest of his generation, but there are bound to be cases that fall outside his expertise. When such a case arises, he consults a senior physician who has seen it all and who can make a clear diagnosis. Counsel is like the senior physician. This doesn’t suggest that prudence is faulty. It’s just limited. And in those moments, it appeals to the limitless wisdom of God.

It’s hard to describe exactly how the Spirit communicates this wisdom. Some spiritual authors describe it as a kind of affective or heart knowledge. Others explain it as a sweet and intimate experience of divine wisdom, like “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened” (Eph 1:18). In counsel, God doesn’t so much communicate, step-by-step, how things are going to go. Rather, he causes the soul to see as he does. He imparts a savor for his divine plan and for our place within it, and he gives us an instinct for faithfully and charitably carrying it out. The gift of counsel causes the soul to sing, “I will run in the way of thy commandments / when thou enlargest my understanding!” (Ps 119:32).

Counsel opens us to the divine prompting. It does not so much initiate prudent action, as receive prudent action. Luis Martinez writes in The Sanctifier that, “[By counsel, the Holy Spirit] constitutes himself the immediate director of the soul, which in its full strength and freedom moves only under his inspiration.”

When you feel yourself confused by a tough choice, you should be on the lookout for the gift of counsel. While certain indications might suggest one solution to your problem, you might feel yourself drawn to another. In that latter direction lies “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23). There may be plenty of reasons that make it difficult to heed the divine instinct. Perhaps it’d be risky or unpopular or even silly. Don’t be discouraged. As you begin to follow the Spirit’s cue, it gets easier to identify his inspirations and follow them in the future.

Though exercised often in extraordinary circumstances, counsel is a regular part of Christian life. It’s given with the grace of baptism. Like the virtue of prudence, it’s a habit of mind, which means that it’s a stable and permanent disposition to be Spirit-led. It responds to Christ’s promise that the Holy Spirit “dwells with you, and will be in you” (Jn 14:17). Ultimately, it’s an essential feature of beatitude. For, while prudence is perfect in a way, it relies upon counsel to direct our actions all the way to heaven.

With that, we’ve got the basics of the virtue of prudence. All that remains is to live them. That, though, is still difficult. No sense in saying otherwise. Along the way, there will be stumbling blocks. All of us sin and will continue to do so, despite our best efforts. There will also be humbling disappointments. Not all dreams come true, especially if you dream big. For all that, though, you can be confident that you have what it takes to venture forth.

Admittedly, there is a real gap between the exalted Christian vocation and our weak and wounded natures. That we even dare to pray the “Our Father,” C. S. Lewis remarks, is itself astonishing. After all, aren’t we putting ourselves in the place of a son or daughter of God? Aren’t we dressing up as Christ? Isn’t that some pretty preposterous pretending? And yet, it’s the startling truth. In baptism God adopted you and commanded you to live accordingly.

So if you still feel yourself to be pretending, remember that some pretending can be good. Children, Lewis comments, pretend to be grown-ups all the time, and, before too long, they get the hang of it. So too in the moral life. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.”

For those, then, who remain overwhelmed at the prospect of choosing well, of living life as a prudent risk, you can afford to be a little confident. Ultimately, “pretending” is just progressing. Life is like any project. It’s imposing in the abstract or at the outset, but it gets easier when you just start doing it. We were made to act. We can and should act. Along the way we will make many, many mistakes. That can be troublesome, but it’s the only way to grow. “For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again” (Prv 24:16).

God doesn’t ask us to be perfect yesterday. He asks us to try today. God created us to do marvelous things in a gloriously blundering way. His perfect plan works through our imperfect actions. God knows that our best is limited and flawed, and he loves it. He hasn’t somehow lowered his expectations to accommodate our weaknesses and sinfulness. In fact, he makes us rise to him precisely in and through them.

Our life is a life on the way. Though it may feel like a lot, it is possible. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. God gives you enough for the task, and you are enough for the task. God has more confidence in you than you do. The only way you can disappoint him is by despairing of that confidence. So seek to choose him in everything you do, and you will succeed in his eyes, which, in the end, are the eyes that matter.

What are some aspects of your life that you wish were otherwise? What about them can be changed and what about them can’t? How can accepting the aspects you can’t change contribute to greater freedom?

If it’s true that your real life isn’t elsewhere, that it’s here and now, what specifically about your real life do you still need to consent to? What would it mean to play the hand you’re dealt in these circumstances?

Think again of a choice that you have been putting off. What do you suspect you really want to do? What is keeping you from pursuing that course? Challenge yourself to move forward confidently in prudence.