Savannah Guthrie returned to the “Today” anchor desk on Monday, two months after the search for her missing mother Nancy Guthrie began.
“Welcome to ‘Today’ on this Monday morning. We are so glad you started your week with us — and it is good to be home,” Savannah said alongside NBC co-host Craig Melvin to start the day. “Well, here we go. Ready or not, let’s do the news.”
The broadcast journalist opted for a bright yellow outfit for her first episode back as host since her mother was kidnapped from her Tucson-area home in the early morning hours of Feb. 1. Last month, Savannah briefly returned to the morning show for a three-part sit down interview about the case with Hoda Kotb.
On Easter Sunday, Savannah shared another video message of hope ahead of her return to work. “We celebrate today the promise of a new life that never ends in death,” she said. “But standing here today, I have to tell you, there are moments in which that promise seems irretrievably far away, when life itself seems far harder than death. These moments of deep disappointment with God, the feeling of utter abandonment for most of us, there will come a time in our life when these feelings hold sway.”
She further admitted that she has since “questioned whether Jesus really ever experienced this particular wound that I feel, this grievous and uniquely cruel injury of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and answers withheld in those darkest moments.”
However, Savannah still stands strong in her faith, which she’s proudly shared she learned from her mom: “But after Jesus died, after he breathed his last, what did he actually know on the cross? He cried out, ‘My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?’ That is the anguished cry of someone who does not know the answers. Where did his soul and his spirit go in those days in between? And what was he thinking? Did he think his time in the grave would be a day or two, or 1,000 years in the grave? Does his agony seem indefinite to him? That torment of uncertainty, the way indefinite pain can feel eternal. Perhaps he did know this feeling after all.”
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI are both leading the Arizona investigation. Savannah has offered a $1 million reward in addition to the FBI’s $100,000 reward for information that leads to Nancy’s recovery.
