Les Disciples Jean et Pierre Courant au Sepulcre Le Matin de la Resurrection, Eugene Burnand

I brought the postcard of this painting home from the Musee D’Orsay. It sits on the shelf above my desk and my heart pings a little every time I look at it. According to my rusty college French, the title translates to something like The Disciples Peter and John Rush to the Tomb on the Morning of the Resurrection. Look at those faces, their simultaneous hope and anxiety. Rushing but almost reluctant. Their thoughts jump from the canvas: Please let it be.

Those disciple faces! I recognize them. I am them. I have experienced those emotions on the long road between promise and knowledge. I have encountered them in the hours between early labor and childbirth, between a prayerful decision and its resolution, between blessing and healing, questions and testimony. Somewhere along the line I picked up the message that fear or anxiety were signs that I’m either on the wrong path or traveling it wrong, despite heavenly assurance at the outset. It makes for a zig-zaggy journey with lots of emotional temperature taking and unnecessary rumination.

Then recently I read an essay about “the wild, tender place between knowing and not knowing,” glanced up at my postcard tilted there on the shelf and thought, Yes.

I had a rush of new understanding about paths and personal inspiration. I can feel fear and anxiety about things I feel inspired to do and yet still be headed in the right direction. Just because I wonder how shall it be doesn’t mean I’m not confident in the outcome.  Even if–perhaps especially if–I’m whispering an anxious mantra of Please let it be and clasping my hands as I walk into the wind.

And now and then the answer even comes like a echo. Annie. Let it be.

. . .

Do you identify with those expressions on the disciples’ faces? What is your experience in that passageway between knowing and not?

p.s. I just noticed that other Segullah writers have posted on “let it be.” Brooke and Emily M. each have had their own terrific take on that phrase.

Related posts:

1. Hooray! It’s a giveaway!
2. Blessings on the food
3. A Woman, but Never a Young One