Foggy Faith

It's confession time again. I know you've been waiting.

Sometimes, I feel like the biggest hypocrite when I write.

I write about faith, trust, and God's ability and willingness to find and save us.

I write about how letting go of the kung fu grip of control and trusting God brings freedom.

But, if I'm being honest, I am still clenching and doubting.

My hope and my faith often depend on the proper outcomes.

I sing God's praises when healing comes, the skies clear, and a situation resolves, or my prayers are answered (in the way I want them to be, of course).

I am full of faith when I am free and clear.

When things are foggy and uncertain, and I am knotted up in fear and worry, my faith wavers, and I freak out, grasping everywhere for solutions and relief.

Have you ever noticed how quiet it is outside when it is super foggy? It's like being in a sound chamber. You can't see or hear anything around you. You panic, start to lose your senses, and can't get a footing on where you are.

You try to turn on some light with your phone, headlights, or from the depths of your freaked-out prayers.

My foggy prayers usually sound something like this:

"Where are you, God? I am scared. I am lost. I don't understand. I prayed all the right prayers. I did all the right things. Why won't you help me? Why won't you fix this? These are good people. Why did this happen to them? Why won't you do something? Why won't you take the pain away and heal them? Why won't you help them and bring a miracle? You said you would save us and make everything better. Are you even real? Am I making all this up?"

I feel ashamed to express those things, and I have backspaced more times than I can count in fear of putting this confession out there—as if God is somehow disappointed in me that my little mustard seed faith shrinks into doubt-filled dust sometimes.

But it's how I have felt, and I know I am not alone in those uncertain and lonely moments of despair.

If you are there right now, frozen in a funk of foggy uncertainty, I see you and am with you.

You are not alone.

Sometimes, the fog lingers for a while, and we have to wait it out.

Ugh, I know. I hate waiting.

As I wait "patiently," reaching around for a way forward like a manic mime trying to get out of a box, I scream my prayers and send them out through the haze into the unknown of the great beyond, trying hard to focus on the times God made a way before.

My faith grows as I look back and see how God lifted the fog and made a way through.

I have to force myself to recall the ways God shone His light into the darkness.

He did it before, and He will do it again.

I don't know how.

I don't know when.

I don't know.

Not knowing is so frustrating, isn’t it?

But what I do know is God loves me.

And I know God loves you.

And I know God is here even if we can't see, feel, or hear Him.

Even the tiniest, dustiest speckle of faith can sustain us during these foggy times.

Take it slow, rest, keep praying, and squeeze my hand. I’m certain God is holding the other one so squeeze that hand too.

We will get through this together, and soon, the light will break in, and the fog will pass.

Look! It's getting brighter already.

God is going to make a way and we are going to be okay.

John 3:21

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

Psalm 4:8

In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Psalm 119: 105

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.