I’m deathly afraid of fog. It’s disorienting. I had an experience once of driving at night in a fog so thick that I could barely make out the taillights of the truck in front of me. My whole body was tensely perched on the edge of my seat as I barely blinked for fear I would lose the pink of the tail lights. When the truck turned off the road, I was left with nothing but a white wall of thick mist made worse by the glare of my headlights. I inched along the road, not sure if I should pull over or keep going. I was in a full panic. Crying, pleading, feeling completely abandon and left alone to figure out how to get out of it. It wasn’t rational. Eventually I saw a big neon hotel marquee and spent the night there. Ever since then, I start to feel the anxiety rise If the slightest wisp of white floats by.

I realized how similar that experience was to how I’ve lived my life. I have spent much of my life fighting against the fog of the lies in my heart. I’ve been fighting for a way forward, to see the direction and purpose in my life, chasing after whatever is in front of me in the hope that it will bring me safely to myself. For a time I can see clearer but eventually the fog of my brokenness rolls in and settles over everything, and I can no longer find my way. I can no long hear God’s voice. I become disoriented and paralyzed. I feel abandoned and alone.

There is a true story about an old blind priest who went out for a walk and got disoriented and couldn’t find his way back home. Knowing his limitations, he sat down in the middle of the road. When a couple from an approaching car recognized him and got out the car to ask him what he was doing, he simply said “I’m putting myself in a place to be found.”

When we are lost in the fog of our brokenness, we think that we have to do the finding and the figuring out and the fighting against the fog. But what we really need to do is put ourselves in a place to be found, a place of surrender and acceptance, and allow the One who does the seeking find us.  Like the parable of the lost coin and the story of the woman at the well, we have a God who will not stop until we are found and brought safely through our fog.