You ever wake up knowing today is the day?
You prepare for it like it's either a miracle or a mild disaster.
You line up your thoughts.
You steady your body.
You rehearse conversations that haven't happened yet.
You whisper the prayers you've been practicing for months...including the very mature one where you assure God you'll be perfectly fine with whatever happens.
Which is usually how God knows you're absolutely not going to be fine.
You've waited a long time for the thing.
And then it doesn't happen.
Not dramatically.
No bad news.
No explanation.
Just a polite reschedule.
Different date.
Different time.
Same ache.
Maybe it's a doctor's appointment.
A meeting.
A phone call.
A decision you've been carrying around so long it's started paying rent.
It doesn't matter.
Disappointment doesn't check importance before it lands.
If you're not careful, it doesn't just hurt.
It hollows you.
It takes the wind out of your sails and leaves you standing there holding the rope anyway, embarrassed by how much you were expecting the breeze.
Hope is fragile.
Not in a poetic way.
In a human one.
Sometimes all it takes to break it is...
Wait a little longer.
Recently, my thing didn't happen.
I was ready.
It was moved.
And I was more devastated than I wanted to admit.
Not because the thing was enormous.
Because I didn't know where to put the disappointment.
I wasn't feeling great that week.
Just that quiet kind of low that doesn't make headlines but somehow makes everything heavier.
The kind where your coffee tastes fine, the weather is fine, your life is technically fine...and yet you feel like you're carrying a backpack full of invisible bricks.
A few days later, I went to Mass.
When it came time for Communion, I stepped forward.
Hands out.
Empty.
Waiting.
The Eucharistic minister smiled.
And before placing the host in my palm, she tapped my hand with her finger.
Barely there.
So light you could miss it if you were rushing.
But something inside me stopped.
I didn't know why.
My body just knew.
It felt like someone saying: I see you.
Stay.
After Mass, I found her outside and thanked her.
She looked genuinely confused.
"I don't remember doing that," she said.
I told her about the tap.
About how it steadied me.
How something about it felt different.
She paused.
Pointed upward.
And smiled.
"Oh," she said. "God told me to do that. You needed it."
I've replayed that moment more times than I can count.
Because it wasn't wisdom.
It wasn't advice.
It wasn't a solution.
The thing I was waiting for still hadn't happened.
Nothing in my circumstances changed.
But somehow I did.
A finger touched a hand.
And hope came back.
Funny how God works sometimes.
We ask for answers.
He sends a tap.
We ask for certainty.
He sends a reminder.
We ask Him to move mountains.
He sends a person who notices we're tired.
The truth we forget...
Most people are carrying something. Most people are waiting for something. Most people are trying very hard not to lose heart while looking perfectly fine.
And sometimes the holiest thing we can do isn't fix anything.
Sometimes it's just noticing.
A smile.
A hand on a shoulder.
A finger on an open palm.
Someone near you is waiting longer than they're letting on. Someone near you is carrying more than they're showing. And it may cost you almost nothing to remind them they are not invisible.
That tap carried me through a cold, snowy day.
I suspect there are people around you who could use one too.
Pay attention.
Your finger already knows where to land.
"Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."
- 1 Thessalonians 5:11
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