Begin Again: A 7-Day Devotional By Leeana TankersleySample

Believing Yourself Forward

In my thirties, beginning again meant learning and then remembering that things are mostly hard because they’re hard, not because I was failing at life. To begin again in my thirties was to go in search of myself. This would have been impossible had I never started unraveling the adversarial relationship I had with myself. Because there is no growth in punishment. We cannot demean ourselves into new territory. The source, the motivation, must come from something deeper. A deeper belief that we do not deserve to keep hurting ourselves. A deeper belief that we were made for more. A deeper belief that we want to be well. A deeper belief in God’s call on our lives.

So I kept watch for her, and I listened for her voice, and I took notes for her, and followed clues to her: the brazen, without-shame Me. And isn’t it interesting that when you begin to recover these beautiful and sacred parts of yourself that have gone dormant for a season, when you begin to wake them up, you also begin to expose the lies you had believed about yourself.

Now, at forty-two, beginning again feels new all over again. Deeper and more surgical than it ever has. Beginning again has attached itself to the most vulnerable places in my life, the most fragile parts of my ego, the deepest places in my story. So, while beginning again might feel cyclical instead of advancing, what we pick up on each turn is the very thing we needed for the next leg of the journey.

I take a deep breath. And then another. All the way in. All the way out. Slow everything down. I just need to reach my hand up and take the grace that is extended toward me. This is hard to do, especially because I feel like I deserve to be sitting in spilled soup. I deserve to drown in this void. The cold ground is where I belong. It’s low and familiar. I hate how inept I can be.

I reluctantly take what is being handed to me. I receive the mercy of a next, new moment. I fall open when what I want to do is slam shut because I’ve learned—the hard way—that self-loathing will never help me into the next moment.

Wherever we’re trying to go, we do not bully ourselves there. We believe ourselves there.

When was the last time you bullied yourself and chose self-loathing over self-love? How can you treat yourself better next time?