She was writing books and raising kids and ministering to women…and then she discovered that her marriage was over. Leeana Tankersley joins Julie Lyles Carr for a vulnerable conversation about how Leeana realized her version of hope wouldn’t work anymore and her journey to discovering a more authentic hope in the midst of heartbreak and change.
Listen to “Finding Real Hope When It Looks Hopeless with Leeana Tankersley” on Spreaker.
Interview Links:
- Leeanna Tankersley: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
- Book: Hope Anyway
- Divorce Care
Transcription:
[00:00:00] Julie Lyles Carr: You’re listening to the AllMomDoes podcast where you’ll find encouragement information and inspiration for the life you’re living. The kids you’re raising the romance you’re loving and the faith you’re growing. I’m your host, Julie Lyles Carr. Let’s jump into this week’s episode. today on this podcast. Leanna Tankersley joins me for a conversation that I think is going to be incredibly timely and evergreen, which is really a unique place to be. So Leanna, thank you so much for being with me today.
[00:00:40] Leeanna Tankersly: Thank you Julie so much for having me now.
[00:00:42] Julie Lyles Carr: I understand that you are a. Former Southern California gal, just like I am. Where in Southern California, did you grow up?
Oh, you’re kidding. I grew up in San Diego, kind of the east side of San Diego. How about you? Well, I just got back from there. I grew up in Lancaster, which is part of Los Angeles county. Where I’m close to Edwards air force base. Cause my dad was with the space shuttle program and I just got back from seeing my daughter who lives very close to San Diego.
And so it was just a great kind of reunion home coming back to the old stomping grounds kind of a thing. So I love your part of the country. Where you, where you hail from.
[00:01:17] Leeanna Tankersly: So, you know, from it, you know what I, I love going back there and it’s a really special place. We were back here this summer for a little trip home, and it was great, but where I am, I’m now in central Virginia.
And let me tell you, having, having really not grown up in four distinct seasons, I just absolutely love the rhythm of seasons. It’s like, oh, it’s so good. So good.
[00:01:38] Julie Lyles Carr: We moved from Southern California to Virginia, to the Vienna Virginia area near Washington DC. And it really was a revelation having been a desert kid because I lived in Lancaster from the time six until I was 15 and my mother and father’s families were all from the south. So I had heard of this thing called seasons, but it was really in Virginia. We got to experience it and it really is it there. You’re right. There’s a beauty to it. That’s really incredible. Now I’m in Austin, Texas, and theres what they call summer, summer, summer, and almost summer, right back to the same thing, but except for an occasional polar vortex. But other than that, it’s pretty much the same.
[00:02:15] Leeanna Tankersly: Isn’t that wild.
[00:02:16] Julie Lyles Carr: That was, that was a very wild thing. And we’ll see what happens this winter, but now you’ve got three kiddos.
[00:02:23] Leeanna Tankersly: That’s right. Yeah. I have boy, girl twins, Lukin lane who are 12, almost 13, which is wild to almost have teenagers in my home. And then I have a little, a little daughter, nine years old named L so 12, 12 and nine. So we’re right in that middle school and later elementary school. And it’s a sweet season, actually their ages right now.
[00:02:44] Julie Lyles Carr: Right. And how old were they when you moved to the central Virginia?
[00:02:47] Leeanna Tankersly: Three years ago. So nine, nine and six. Yeah.
[00:02:51] Julie Lyles Carr: At those ages, how did they handle the move? Because, you know, having been a kid who moved around, but I didn’t move around a lot until I was actually in high school, which was, uh,. It wasn’t really, it was not fun.
Yeah. But when I was younger, we did move from Alabama to Pennsylvania, to California and pretty in a pretty quick cadence. And I was like, First second grade at that time. And it was, it was different than when I moved in high school. But how did your kids handle the move?
[00:03:14] Leeanna Tankersly: Yeah, I can’t imagine doing a move in high school.
Um, you know, they’ve done really well. I will say overall, but disruption and change and is always a thing, you know, and people would say to me, oh, kids are so resilient. And I actually got a little tired of hearing that because it’s like, yeah, they are resilient, but we don’t need to test the bounds of their resilience you know? And as I think we’re going to get into a little bit more of the circumstance. That precipitated our move across country was that my found out my marriage was ending our 15 year marriage and, um, I needed to be closer to family. And, um, since then their dad has also moved to Virginia and is near where we are.
And, um, but at the time I just needed support from family and my family. Most of it was all out this way. And so, you know, my kids had never lived near any of their family and I grew up away from my own, uh, grandparents and that sort of thing. And so the gift in the move, I will say if we’re being optimistic is that they got to come and live near cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and that has been. That’s priceless. That’s priceless. Right. But, um, yeah, leaving friends and starting over in new schools and in, in a new kind of restarting in a lot of ways is difficult. One thing I did though, um, is I, I, that, that Christmas before we moved, I, um, got a puppy, which I actually, you know, I don’t know if that was my, my best decision or my worst decision.
And there are still days I wonder, but I’ll say. He used so much in these transitions to have at the time, this little, this little ball of joy brought so much fun and play and laughter and comfort. And then when we moved, we brought Rosie with us and she just, she just created continuity and companionship.
And so. My kids are going through a lot of loss and a lot of change. And, and yes, a lot of the responsibility fell on me to take care of this crazy animal, but I wouldn’t do it any differently. Honestly. And three years later I felt like my kids are thriving and I do feel like it’s so hard in life. I think we’re often faced with these crossroads and we are truly trying to do the best we can and we don’t.
Is this going to be, it’s going to blow up in my face. Is this, I mean, I prayed, I got a lot of counsel and I just felt like this was the right thing to do. So I’m, I’m grateful. And I do believe the kids are really thriving at this point, right?
[00:05:35] Julie Lyles Carr: I mean, that’s a lot of change. That’s a lot of change to go through both watching a parent’s relationship, come to an end and also then completely moving to a different part of the country, but then to go into the embrace of extended family.
That’s also a change to when you’ve been living independently in some ways. And so I think that’s really fascinating just how you’ve been navigating that change with the inclusion of a puppy. But I understand that because I do think that then you have a little creature in your world who really isn’t impacted as much by everything that’s going on and you can see.
What joy and what playfulness and what hope can look like being played out before you I’m really fascinated with the book that you’ve been working on called hope anyway. And it’s that addition of that word that I think is really powerful because Leanna, we, here we are. We are still, I mean, do we call this mid pandemic. I don’t even know what to call this season anymore that we really thought was going to be a much shorter run than it has been. And I have this sense and I was talking to our content coordinator for the podcast. Rebecca, the other day, we were talking about the sense that people really need.
Hope that the longer, this has gone on, the more we’re realizing we’re going to have to live with it. You know, I think a lot of times our hope is hinged on when something ends, instead of the idea of how you live with something that is really challenging. And I would say in your case, that’s what a divorce is, right?
I mean, it’s, it’s having hope anyway in something that’s not really a status, that’s probably not going to end. So what was the original Genesis for thinking of this book? Because I have to imagine. Three years ago, you weren’t feeling terribly hopeful.
[00:07:15] Leeanna Tankersly: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, you’re putting your finger right on it. It’s what, how do we maintain hope in our lives when the outcome does not turn out the way that we wanted it to, you know, I there’s an author that I’m following that said it this way, the other day, how do we move forward with lives? We didn’t get. And it, and it used to be prior to the pandemic that maybe that was just that status was reserved.
For those of us who had gone through a crisis or a tragedy. Now we are all living in that space. We are all living in lives that we didn’t plan for every last one of us. And there is this, I think, impending. But it’s just one phone call or email away from changing all over again. You know, we’re constantly living in this, are my kids going to school? Are they not going to school? Can I go to work? Can I not go to work? Um, are the stores going to have what I need? Are they not? And so, yes, the, the Genesis of the book was. I believe hope and science tells us that our bodies, our systems, our physiology, our psychology need hope being cynical and being apathetic it’s not good for us just from a scientific standpoint, right? So when things aren’t going the way that we would have chosen, when we don’t get the outcome that we would have, that we were hoping for, that we were praying for, that we were counting on. Whereas, hope we abandon it. We can’t have it anymore.
You know? And so in my particular case, I found out my marriage was ending very unexpectedly. And so if this thing that we’re counting on changes drastically, what is our relationship like with hope at that point. And I can’t imagine there isn’t a person that’s listening that hasn’t gone through that in the last 18 months.
Right. So I guess what I, what I really parse out in this. Is the difference between hoping and an outcome and hoping in a process of hoping for something versus hoping in something. And this is the difficult practice that I think we’re all being asked to exercise right now is perhaps what we hope for is not happening or it’s not happening in the way or the timing that we wanted, but it doesn’t matter what you believe.
You’re not guaranteed any certain outcome in life. So then what I went into and it was really in the wilderness of this extended undoing of our relationship of my marriage, where can I invest hope in, in this process? So I put 27 different things in the book of places where I found that I could invest, hope I could trust I could put faith in and it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t fix it. This was not a fixable solution situation I tried, and it was not a fixable situation. So we’re not talking about ways that we can get the outcome that we want or the ways we can solve a situation. We can’t solve a pandemic. Right. Uh, so I put together these different things that, um, have helped me along the way.
And what I hate to say, it tends to be bad. News is these are small things, or these are counterintuitive things and they’re not, uh, you know, flashing lights in the sky. Like a lot of times we want, right. So, but this is the Genesis of hope. Anyway, how do we have. Anyway, anyway,
[00:10:31] Julie Lyles Carr: now define for me how you define hope because it is something of an esoteric term and you’re right I think a lot of people have hope specifically in an outcome. And that prepositional phrase is a really an important qualifier when it comes to understanding what hope is. So how did you come to define hope? In this situation. And do you think that that definition is the one that a lot more of us should be hanging on to instead of potentially other ones that we have floating out there?
So get us all on page on this definition of hope while defining our terms.
[00:11:03] Leeanna Tankersly: You know, I think that a lot of us have thought the word hope is wishing I hope it snows. I hope the Padres win the world series. I hope we don’t have to move, you know, whatever it is it’s wishing. And that, uh, what I’m talking about is something that is, it is, uh, much different than that.
And so I talk about in the book helped me hope, which is that kind of, oh, help me, help me, help me that wishing and I talk about hard one hope and that’s really, my definition is this is not the hope that we receive because things went well. It’s the hope we receive because they did not. And so this is hope as I define it here is that we will continue despite our circumstances.
That’s hope and we are loved despite our circumstances. There’s a beautiful passage in Lamentations three, and which is the old Testament scripture. And it says because of God’s great love we are not consumed. Honestly. That’s how I define hope that things are gonna come into your life and they may seem consuming in, uh, in, um, the short run, but in the long run, Hope means that we are never going to be annihilated.
[00:12:16] Julie Lyles Carr: How does someone come to find and let let’s speak specifically to listeners who may be going right now through a major marriage upheaval? It’s interesting because I don’t think that we know the history yet of what this pandemic is going to mean on marriages. We’ve seen an uptick in divorces, and now we see sociologists saying, we’ll know, things are kind of coming back down a little bit.
And I don’t know that we’re going to know the long-term impact on relationships by the end of this. I do know just anecdotally of a lot of people in my world who have struggled mightily in the combination of marriages that may have already been struggling a bit. And then you throw the pandemic on top of that and you throw deferring politics in marriage.
And I mean, all kinds of things have gotten thrown into the box. We’re on this. So how do we, how can we help encourage someone who finds themself in a situation that they didn’t expect? And they may go well. Yeah. Hope sounds great. But you know, right now I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to potentially have.
You know, be the person for the, be the primary breadwinner for these kids that I have, or I’m having to move out of the home that we built together over a number of years or whatever the situation is. What do you think was sort of the starting point for you to be able to get your feet back under you when it came to this.
This is a really important question. And, and the, the largest term that I can say is support or help.
[00:13:42] Leeanna Tankersly: You cannot do this alone, and you cannot do it in isolation. I think because fear and lies tend to grow and also confusion tend to grow when we’re isolated. The first thing I did, the very first thing I did was call a dear friend who I could say anything to and was never going to impose her agenda on me of what she felt like needed to happen in my marriage. So I think we need to have people around us who are not trying to fix anything, but are trying to love us and listen, and support us. And then in addition to kind of like a peer group, um, the very next phone call I made was to, uh, um, therapist is no way in my personal opinion that you can, um, walk through something this intense and with this many entanglements and tentacles, uh, because divorce has I can’t even tell you so many tentacles and so many layers of loss, and you need a wise and trained guide in my opinion, to walk you through it, to help you pull some of that apart. Especially I think if you’re a parent, because you’re also trying to help your children. It’s so layered. It’s so, so, so layered.
And so, yeah, I think, I think if you are listening to this and you are confused, You are feeling depression over that confusion. You feel like, I don’t know what’s right. And what’s wrong. And a lot of people are trying to impose. Agenda for, you know, some people say, oh, you’ve got to fix it no matter what.
Oh, you’ve got to leave them and people really get bossy. And, um, so yeah, you need to have, you need to get out of that. Quiet your mind, and you need to talk to someone who can help you sort through, uh, what’s really going on practically. What’s going on emotionally. What’s going on financially, all of that.
And then, you know, I think this is also when we see what our, where our faith really is too. Right? We say. Okay, God, you know, I know you didn’t cause this, I know you didn’t force this to happen, but are you still here and are you with me? And can you walk with me through this? And um, so you know, our faith is a huge component of, of that support as well.
[00:15:52] Julie Lyles Carr: Right. And talking about the faith component. One thing that I still think. And I mean, after I served years in women’s ministry, in a church environment, I still don’t think we’re doing a great job as faith communities, supporting people through divorce processes. And this is not to throw anybody under the bus or church leadership.
I mean, I was part of a church staff for a long time. I know how overwhelmed we were in general with just congregate needs. So it’s not that the heart isn’t there. I think that a lot of the judgment to some degree has fallen away. But I still feel like we’re ill-equipped to help. What are some things that you think would have been helpful to you in a faith community that, you know, maybe somebody listening today, who isn’t walking through the situation you’ve been through, but it’s like, you know what, that’s something I could do for somebody, or that wakes me up to the woman in my small group.
Who’s going through this. This is something I could do for her. What would have been helpful maybe that was missing as you were walking through this.
[00:16:49] Leeanna Tankersly: Yeah, a few things, and these weren’t necessarily things that were missing, but things that either really helped or w I, one thing I want to preface this, my answer with is that I was at a conference recently and I had some women come up to me.
I spoke at this conference and shared the new book. And so I did share in my speaking that I was, that I had gone through this and I cannot tell you, Julie, This is to your point, the number of women that came up to me to tell me that they were in a similar situation or going through a similar situation.
And when they told me it was so interesting, their body language, they would lean in really close. They would drop their voice, they would drop their eyes. And it was like this posture of shame immediately. It didn’t matter what the specifics were, if it was their fault, if it was not their fault, however you want to define fault.
You know, it was, it was just, this whole experience is so shameful. I think that right there is the thing that our faith communities has start, have got to start, um, pulling apart. What is the root of shame around for women who are going through this or in these situations and how can we start with that and help heal it?
And part of it, I think, is talking about it and normalizing the fact that many, many, if not, Half or more, or most marriages go through seasons that are really, really difficult. And this is normal. This is not, uh, uh, uh, you know, this should not produce shame in us. And so I think that’s one real baseline thing is we’ve we’ve got it.
And so sometimes that means putting people up front that have gone through this and say, this person is not disqualified because they’ve gone through a divorce. This person we need to hear from them because 50% of our community or more is in that situation. Right. Something that my faith community here in Virginia did that I thought really spoke to this as they did it.
There’s an 18 week program called divorce care. And it’s a, it’s a national international organization. And it’s like, like celebrate recovery or something, but it’s a, it’s a support. And I, and a recovery group for people that are going through divorce and there were weeks that were terribly awkward. Yeah.
Yeah. And there was parts of it that were like, oh, this is horrible. You know, it just it’s old school or it’s, you know, whatever. But I just felt like the fact that my church chose to offer that. It spoke volumes to me. So if you have an opportunity at your church to influence, um, offering these things to people to say we care, you know, I think that’s important.
And, um, I, I, the other thing I’ve already spoken to, but I just want to emphasize it. If you have a friend who’s going through a divorce, you may have, you will likely have very, very strong opinions about what’s going on. You have, may have strong opinions about what you think they should be doing or should not be doing.
If you have a friend that’s going through this, if you can reserve as best you can, unless you’re being directly asked reserve
judgment, reserve all of your big solutions. I promise you the situation is more complicated than it appears. And I promise you when you’re the one emotionally entangled, it’s much more difficult than when you’re not.
And so, um, my friends that were able to sit with me and say, I’m here, and if you have a question, we can talk through it. My sister, you know, she would, she would time it every day. She was on the east coast at the time. And I was on the west coast and she would time it every day when I got into the pickup line for my kids at school.
And she just sent me a text checking in dot, dot dot. Yeah. That seems like what in the world would that do? It’s one of the most significant gestures I remember from that time, because every day, five days a week, she would just send me a little text saying checking in and I can respond to as much or as little I could call her right then and rant and rave.
[00:20:24] Julie Lyles Carr: I could just write it respond within a month. Yeah. Yeah, but it was being thought of being loved in a neutral way. Right. I, I love that. I think those small things really do add up and something you said that I want to reflect back that I think is really profound. You know, maybe we don’t have to make it really complicated as faith communities just to show that we care.
I think that that is a really profound thing to be about, to find a way to show that you care. Oftentimes in difficult situations, we want to show up with answers. We want to show up with solutions. We want to show up with preventatives. We want to show with all these things and yet what can get lost in all of that dialogue.
That do we care about what people are going through or not? And sometimes the way to show you care is simply to say that you care not to offer the next, you know, 18 things or these different options or whatever. So I think that that’s a really beautiful way to put that you talk about hope being uncomfortable.
And I’m really interested in this notion because a lot of times I think that we embrace hope as some kind of bomb or some kind of anesthetic almost in a painful situation. So what does it mean to allow hope to be uncomfortable? And give me an example of that.
[00:21:40] Leeanna Tankersly: Yeah. Well, great question. I feel like, um, you know, I had to ask myself when all this was unfolding and all this was the undoing. The great undoing is hope a trick? ’cause I think a lot of people are asking that same question. Does it matter if I hope because it doesn’t ensure an outcome. And so therefore, am I just setting myself up for this grand cosmic trick hope is not about a secured outcome. You know, it’s about, uh, the process and the, the weight, the small things that we’re investing our hope in along the way.
But yeah, I also think that one reason why hope is uncomfortable is because it involves desire and disappointment. And these are two of the largest human experiences for our T our tender human hearts. When we get a desire, I think about the woman who’s listening, who really wants to wants a baby, you know, and it’s like the most significant desire in her heart, and it’s not happening in the way or in the timing that she wanted and the deep disappointment involved in that.
And so letting yourself come back around to hope for that is tricky and it’s risky. And it’s really vulnerable. And so, yeah, for me, um, I think what I really had to, to get my head around is I am still loved and I’m still seeing. No matter how the circumstances actually unfold. So I think that’s why hope is uncomfortable.
And I can still put my hope in that being loved and being seen even when the circumstances, but this is terrible news. Like this is really terrible news in our humanity, but then I think about, okay, well then what was the point of Jesus before he went to the cross saying, um, if you could do. Any other way, could you please find another way to do this?
You know, even Jesus was like, I don’t want this particular outcome. Right. And, um, so, you know, part of, I think what makes hope uncomfortable is that it involves some surrender. And I don’t think we like that either. You know? So, you know, it gets into these places in our hearts and in our souls that are incredibly human.
Incredibly vulnerable. And, um, and it, I think this area of hope is where our greatest desires and, uh, are, are honest, down and dirty in the trenches, faith intersect. And so that’s why I think it’s uncomfortable.
[00:24:04] Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah, just that place where something, two things have to co-exist that we don’t normally like to allow to cross the fence to each other.
And yet I get it. I, I completely understand because hope is a deep vulnerability. I mean, that’s the reality. So what do you think is the opposite of hope?
[00:24:22] Leeanna Tankersly: Well, great. I, and I talk about this a little bit in the book that I think we often think of the opposite of hope is cynicism, you know, but I read this author that says cynicism actually still care.
And the actual opposite of hope is apathy because apathy no longer cares, no longer is just sort of flat-lined numb is another great word to use as the opposite of hope. And I think when we go through these really traumatic situations, it can be part of our response is to just say, I’m I have to flatline, and that can be really necessary. I mean, one of the state, these, if you think about the stages of grief, you know, depression is a stage of grief that when you’re really truly grieving, there are days where you just do feel that like I’m just vacant, I’m numb. But I think the point is we don’t stay there. And so if we’re feeling apathetic, if we’re feeling like I just don’t care, I don’t care.
This is a time. And we need to think about what I need to invest hope. You know, I love the quote “new life starts in the dark, whether it’s a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb or Jesus in the tomb, new life starts in the dark.” And I think when the, when the lights get turned off in our life, we can assume that that is the opposite of. Right, right. But it is. And that’s really the message that I want to send to people more than anything is that I know the lights have gone out.
They went out on me too, and it’s so hard and you’re groping around trying to find a pan to hold and I get it. And you’re looking for a pencil. To show you where to put your next step. And I get it. You know, I don’t wish that I had gone through this. I don’t wish that my children had gone through this, but there’s also this part of me that there’s like, I wouldn’t trade the person I’ve become as a result.
And I don’t say that lightly or as a cliche, you know, but I think new things have formed in me as a result of this. That I really am attached to now. Right, right.
[00:26:32] Julie Lyles Carr: That’s an incredible quote. I love that. And I think it just does. Oh, it’s gorgeous. Yeah. Such and so, right. I mean, it’s just spot on, you talked about the beauty of having a friend that you could say anything.
And I think that’s really important. And you talked about also the beauty of having a therapist to guide you through this situation. And I think it’s important that people really embrace both of those things. Sometimes I’ll see someone who goes a therapy route and that’s great. They also need that place to just truly be able to vent to someone who cares about them and in a relationship that’s going to continue pass the therapy relationship.
But then I’ve also seen where people don’t get outside counsel and they have a girlfriend they adore, and that girlfriend is doing what you’ve talked about, which is that thing of, well, you need to do this and you’ve got to do that and you’ve got to do this. And, and not that that wisdom can’t be spot on, but it’s also not exactly.
Completely objective kind of directive either way. It’s very biased and you need somebody biased. You need somebody to be on your side in a situation like this, but that combination is really important, but I want to hear also what happened for you in your relationship with. When all of this went down, because I think there is a certain level that we understand that God does give us this measure of free will, which means he gives it to everyone, which means that there can be people in our lives who make decisions completely opposite of what is fair, what seems right.
What seems wise, and we are stuck with the results of some of those decisions. So how did you navigate that in your relationship with God? Uh, You know, this can be the kind of situation that will draw you. I mean, smack dab right next to God, or it will send you saying I’m doing. And I’ve seen both things right.
[00:28:23] Leeanna Tankersly: In my case, I just feel like, and again, I don’t say this lightly, and I don’t assume this happens for everyone, but in my case, I just felt like God was so near. And it’s so true. What you said, Julie, this is very important that God has given us a free will and he’s given every. Well, so the people in our lives have choices they can make.
And it doesn’t mean that we can’t be mad about those choices. We can’t try to talk them out of those choices, but at the end of the day, you can’t control another human being. And believe me, I learned that. So. I felt like, uh, in the, in the reality and knowledge of that. And I felt like God was really, you know, even after our very first therapy appointment and I, and I thought I’m going to go into this therapy appointment and I’m going to fix everything.
And I mounted these fabulous excuses or, and, um, arguments as to why this needed, you know, the decision needed to change. We needed to fix our marriage. And it was just very clear that that was. I didn’t have control over that. And that was not what was going to happen. And I left that and I felt like I sat in my car and I was absolutely undone.
It was like, it was like I found out I was getting divorced all over again. Cause I realized I was not going to be able to feel. And I just sat there in my car and I was, I just, I can viscerally feel it in my body. What am I? I was just, what am I going to do? You know? And I remembered that, just hearing that small voice of God and just knowing that that’s what it was.
I don’t know how else to describe it, but just knowing, I know that this that’s what this voice is, and God’s saying to me, you have to let him go Leanna, you have to let him go. And that right there started. Very poignant communication, especially over the next year. And I Chronicle it all in the book where God, in these moments just came to me and it, again, it didn’t solve everything.
It wasn’t always the big answer I needed, but it was just a nudge or reminder of, um, W who God was in this situation and who I was. And that I w I was not forgotten. I think sometimes that’s what we need to know more than anything. It’s like, even if the situation is getting fixed, we need to know we’re not alone right now.
And so I feel like my, I feel like I can look back and trace some of these conversations that got, and I, I also I’ll share one more with you. Um, fast forward, about six months and our extended family. Devastated by this. This was really hit. The reality of it was kind of past the immediate bubble and our extended family was really devastated and I just felt responsible somehow.
I just, even though I wasn’t, I felt like I just can’t let all these people that I love suffer and be in such pain. And I think this is probably normal, you know, and I was standing on a, on a riverbank and in the lake Tahoe area. And I was hatching another plan, which we tend to do, you know, I was hatching another plan and I was like, okay, how can I fix this so that I can save all these people that I love from having to go through pain?
My children, my parents, my. My ex-husband’s parents, his siblings, you know, all these people that are involved that are devastated. And I had this picture of me gathering all these people and throwing them on my back and hiking them out, hiking them out of the, you know, the wilderness. And I remember God saying to me in that moment, Leanna, it’s not all up to you.
It’s not all up to you. And I just cried in that moment, realizing how much I was carrying, how much responsibility, how much, um, you know, how many strategic arguments I was mounting in my head, how deeply I was wanting to fix things and how that was not my idea. It’s not my job to save the people I loved.
And so I’m giving you some examples, Julie, of how I felt like God in these very tender moments came to me and just helped me remember even things I already knew, but we’re really a small salvation, right?
[00:32:27] Julie Lyles Carr: And carried you to the next moment. And I think that’s a great definition of the hope we should be looking for Leanna Tankersley hope anyway, welcoming possibility in ourselves, God and each other.
Where can listeners find you online and all the places to learn more about the book, more about you, and to be able to be in connection. Yes. Thank you. My website is just my name, Leanna tankersley.com. The book is available on Amazon and, and Barnes and noble and wherever fine books are sold. And then I hang out mostly on Instagram and Facebook, mostly Instagram.
And you can find me in both places, Atlanta Tankersley. I’d love to see you guys. Awesome. Leanna, thank you so much for being with me today. I know that for a lot of our listeners who are going through a lot of things, even if not the exact same situation you’re walking through, but just what all particularly this last season of 18 months has meant in terms of trying to find hope in some new places.
I think that this is going to be a really timely. Evergreen because this is life, right. We’re always needing to carry hope, even if we’re not in the middle of a pandemic. Thank you for such a timely and evergreen message. I really appreciate it.
[00:33:34] Leeanna Tankersly: Thank you, Julie. It’s been a really meaningful conversation.
[00:33:41] Julie Lyles Carr: Check out the show notes for all the links, info and other goodness from this week’s episode with a big thank you to our content coordinator, Rebecca. I’ve got to request, please go like, and leave a review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it really does make a difference in helping other people find the show.
And I’ll see you next week here at the AllMomDoes podcast.
