A Foggy Perspective

After a two-month hiatus, I am back. I, A) Do not know where summer ran off to, but she and Time eloped and left me standing at the brink of a new season; B) apologize for my absence but C) in my defense have been taking summer school, training for a 5K, and trying to accumulate observational hours. Therefore my mind has been gallivanting elsewhere for the past few weeks. Back to my point.

A Foggy Perspective. Yes, this is where I found myself two weeks ago.(Quite frankly, I am surprised that I have not seen the Ark and my admirable leopards floating by outside of my window because I feel like Mississippi has gotten nothing but rain for the past two weeks.) I had just left the clinic where I was shadowing when the rain began. Being the extremely over-dramatic girl that I am, I began to get antsy and started giving pep talks to myself as I drove through the rain and blared the Phillips, Craig, and Dean even louder (not sure how this really helped my concentration).  Yet, the rain only grew stronger, and within a few minutes, I literally could not see out of my windshield. At  this point, I was putting on quite the show, panicking, convinced that I would ram into the back of a cement truck and be buried beneath tons of plaster, rock, and debris. I didn't understand why my windshield was so foggy and how the rain had gotten so bad in such a short span of time. I was convinced that the situation was a lot worse than it really was (which I would soon find out it was not). Then, the oh-so-terribly-rusty light bulb clicked: "Turn on your DEFROST, Shelby."

If there had been a theme song for my life in that moment, it would have definitely been, "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone."

Yep, sure enough, the defrost took care of the fog, and guess what? I could see. (I felt only slightly moronic).

So what's my point besides pointing out the blatantly obvious that I have a  very short circuit in my light bulb of common sense?

Lately, there have been so many things going on, nationally and locally, that can give us as humans, and me as an individual, a foggy perspective. Life is full of storms where our vision becomes foggy, and we can't see through the rain. We face storms where we think the situation is a lot worse than it really is. We convince ourselves that there is not going to be any slack in the downpours. Yet, as I read yesterday in A Thousand Gifts, "Above the clouds, light never stops shining." Putting it into my terms: Hidden in the fog, there is always a place of defrost.

In life, we can't see past the clouds or the fog because we can't see the whole picture and because we are humans. Because I am human and because I want to know the answers and comprehend everything, I have struggled before with accepting that some storms in life are not going to always make sense. Yet, as I struggle with this, I find peace in the reminder of this verse today.

" So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Cor. 4:18

This verse is the answer to the foggy perspectives in our lives. Through our human capacities and human eyes, we can only perceive the rain and the fog sometimes. We cannot see the light behind the clouds and we cannot see the clarity beyond the fog. We can only see what is in front of our eyes. In this sense, we are all helpless. However, there is a God who can see the light. He can see the clarity. He can see what we can't: the unseen. He can see the bigger picture that is working for His glory. He can see the eternity that is an ocean whereas the temporary is merely a drop. Therefore, we must have faith in the unseen. Faith that there is light shining behind the clouds. Faith that there is a message to defrost in the fog. Faith that the situation is really not as it appears and that is is merely- a foggy perspective.