It is a brisk fall morning along the Carolina shore. I am walking along with a friend who wants to talk about the struggles he is having, trying to make a choice about a new direction in life. "It is as though I am driving in a fog and cannot see which way to turn," he says. "I do not know what to do."
Lost in a fog. That is what people say. What they mean is, "I am uncertain and unclear about what to do next or to what I am being called next. I am worn down by my own attempts to try and live in and out of and around and through the calling to which I have already responded."
I know what they mean. I have heard this before. And I have said it myself - more than a few times. I also know my friend does not want me to answer his question; what he really wants to know is how to live in the fog.
I know about that, too.
LIVING IN THE FOG
"Behold, I am about to do something new," go the words of the prophet, waiting in the dark fog for the Messiah to come. "Can you not yet perceive it?"
Well, at least we are in good company. So I tell my friend what I know.
First, you have to hold two notions in your and in your heart- and in that mysterious place between the two where the Holy Spirit seems to live and breathe and have His being in us. Two notions that seem to contradict each other.
On the one hand, you need to accept the fact that such a fog comes and goes when it will. Right now you are to live in it and not fight it. Flailing around and kicking up a lot of dust - impassioned conversations, dramatic telephone calls, anguished pleas to the One who made the fog - all this may well make the fog thicker, if anything. Driving faster in the fog is not generally a good idea either, no matter how loudly you are blowing the horn.
Somewhere in the midst of a lifelong struggle it determine whether he should make a major change in his life, the spiritual writer Thomas Merton observed in his journal, "So, if God wants me to sit her in the confusion, then that is just fine with me." Not a bad posture to take while waiting for some new thing God is about to do.
On the other hand, remember, too, that you do have to keep going. Your life, regardless of how simple or complex, loud or quiet, is going to continue around you and within you. "Life is not a puzzle to be solved;" writes Merton, "it is a mystery to be lived." And sometimes the living is to be done while shrouded in fog.
You cannot stop the world while you figure out what to do next. You are going to have to figure this out while you are moving. And you will have to do so somewhere between sitting still and going too fast.
Do what you must do each day as well as you can, with all joy and spirit and diligence you can muster. Do the things that you know to do, and do them as well as you can. Let the everyday things of life keep you grounded. And be grateful for them.
Next, I tell my friend the things that can help with the choosing and yet not make the fog grow thicker; Be sure you know the real question. A question about God's will is always a choice between two goods. It is never a choice between a bad and a good. Make sure the choices before you are both good ones. And then repeat the question. You may well repeat your way into the answer.
And maybe another question will help. "What am I being stripped of here?" What am I being asked to let go of or to pick up? What am I being taught or shown about the ways of God in this? It may well be that those are the things for which God has given you the gift of the fog.......
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