Your Future is Foggy

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A little while ago I was driving the kids to school. It was a foggy Autumn morning. We had just recently started to do prayers on the drive to school. I have the kids take turns telling God something they are thankful for, and then they can either ask God to bless someone, or ask for help with something.

This extra foggy morning, my oldest (9), said this:

Thank You, God, for the fog in my life.

I was immediately thrown off by this. For the fog in my life? First off, who is thankful for fog in general (other than the creators of Karl the Fog), and second, who’s thankful for fog in their life?

But as I got completely distracted from listening to the rest of my children’s prayers, I realized how beautiful and unintentionally insightful that prayer was.

Fog keeps us from seeing what’s farther ahead.

And so does God.

If we could see further into our future, we would become obsessed with it and focused solely on that. And that would keep us from the present. That would keep us from the steps we need to take to get to that future. That would keep us from listening to God in the moment because we would see where we will be, and would ignore His guidance that actually changes our course to get there.

Sometimes it’s crazy frustrating not knowing where things are going (am I supposed to be doing more ministry? More posts? Only be a stay at home dad? Get a masters? Move to Minnesota? aaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh). It would be amazing to just know what’s going to happen so I can work on making it happen.

But that’s not how God – and time – works. We take it a moment at a time.

And if that means being stuck in the fog and moving a little slower than we’d like, so be it.

P.S. I did ask my oldest what he thought his prayer could actually mean, and he totally nailed it that it was about not seeing the future.
Kids can be freaking brilliant sometimes (key words can and sometimes).