Hope Anyway by Leeana TankersleySample

Day Seven

Look Again

I remember taking the dog for a walk the first Christmas my kids spent with their dad. I was aware of wanting to hold space for sadness while also acknowledging goodness. I crunched pea gravel under my feet, and I drank coffee that had gone cold. And then, there it was. 

The small voice. The familiar voice. Saying just two words: Look again. 

I looked even though I had been already. I looked and took in what I was seeing. The dog’s breath in the air. The mist hovering over the pasture.

Look again. 

I looked again. In the foreground, a cow was coming into focus. Something I could not see thirty seconds prior. 

Look again. 

It went on like this. I kept looking. Again and again.

I keep looking. Again and again.

Looking for love. Looking for hope. Looking for humor. 

Looking for nourishment. Looking for connection. Looking for beauty. Looking for the unexpected. Looking at how things change upon inspection, and I didn’t do anything at all to create that change. I just looked. And looked again. 

Did you know that the word hope is a word of unknown origins? We can’t pinpoint where hope started, what language first articulated it. We don’t know when it was formed into meaning.

Something about this rings true. We don’t drum up hope. It’s not something we can cajole. It’s more mysterious than that.

But somewhere along the way we realize that our greatest wound is actually a portal, a doorway, to our greatest healing. It has the potential to bring us home to ourselves, if we’ll walk through. 

Some days we don’t have the mental health or even the desire to look around us. It’s OK. Go to bed. 

But then there are the days when we can lift our heads even a bit and look. And then look again. And things reveal themselves. Even while a dog is tangled at our feet and cold coffee is spilling everywhere. 

Look again. 

Put those two words in your pocket. Walk around with them close to you. When you can, look, and then look again. See how shapes shift and mist rises and clouds change and hope stirs. And you had so little to do with it all, except to allow for the portal. Except to be open to hope.

God, what hope are you stirring in me today?