
A beautiful oak ushered me on, a canopy over the country road. I wanted to slow. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before or why it comforted me so.
Curiosity is a cousin to wonder. A call to examine whatever captivates or corners you, an invitation, a leaning in with inquisition.
Even fascination.
What if we could be curious not over only beautiful things, but the bitter things too?
Curious over pain, over unpreparedness for hurt, over horrible things that shouldn’t have happened to us?
What if we accept that understanding may or may not ever come fully?
If we’d consider the possibility that curiosity is the entry into a continuum that initiates and begins a relationship with healing.
We may be the catalysts for our very own, deeply personal healing.
And if we will invite curiosity, we’ll begin a new search, one with maturity.
We may be able to see every perspective, not just our own.
We may be able to see through the eyes of the others involved, how pain of their own unintentionally resulted in ours.
We may, most importantly, stop berating ourselves why and decide,
Okay, now I see sort of why and I believe I’ll move on to “what now?”
And for the unexplainable horrible things?
Perhaps, we could consider embracing them rather than stubbornly and with great force, doing our best to erase them, the unerasable wounds.
Because as we embrace our hurt, we at last find we are worthy of being embraced by ourselves.
Every hard and wonderful thing can become embraceable rather than erased.
I drove on down the pretty morning road to approach the old white weathered house on the curve, the one I love to imagine made new.
The one flanked by a massive tree trunk and all its dying limbs now gray and fading away.
Why one oak thrives and the other got uprooted and thrown to the ground,
No way to know. No way at all.
Only to be curiously aware and to live with deep longing, a longing that is always known even if it lingers long.
“You know what I long for, Lord; you hear my every sigh.”
Psalms 38:9 NLT
Embrace all your longings to know. Be curious and thrive.


















