Driving in Fog

The fog blew in gusts across the road, walls of white, stark and blinding against the black of the night. Headlights blinked into existence between patches of fog but disappeared as another cloud quickly rolled in. The field of vision was limited to a stone’s throw past the hood of the car. It felt isolating, like driving in a white bubble. In a vain attempt at better visibility, the driver turned on the brights. We were met with their blinding reflection against the fog and immediately switched them back off, a predictable outcome. Hunching over the steering wheel, squinting, the driver involuntarily tried anything and everything hoping for clarity. White knuckles gripped the steering wheel and drove each anxious filled mile. We followed the double yellow stripe and the dotted white line, watching the road as they appeared to slide out underneath the fog and took us safely home.

When I think back to our first year with our daughter, it reminds me of that treacherous drive in the fog. I am amazed at how short and long it was. On this side, looking back, it seems like I blinked and she turned one, and somehow, unexplainably, that was two years ago. But I remember what it felt like to live it. It felt like I would be miserable forever, that my life would be spent in that bubble of grief and fear and anxiety. It felt isolating and blinding, like driving in a heavy fog. I couldn’t see the world around me clearly, I couldn’t see myself clearly; all I saw was my pain and grief.

I think lots of us are living in a place like that. Lost in the fog of our hurt, we can’t see the massive amount of people, just like us, driving in the same dense fog of pain. People are going through life, fighting cancer or Alzheimers with their loved ones. Parents are grieving for the life their child can never have because of physical limitations. Others are stretched too thin by chronic pain or financial instability. Many people are hurt and aching from the cuts of broken relationships and shattered dreams. There’s a whole world full of people hurting. Sadly, I think sometimes instead of seeing them, we turn to comparison. Our hurting self says that someone else doesn’t have it as bad, at least they have a healthy child, at least they’re financially stable, at least they have a supportive husband, at least, at least, at least. It’s like turning high beams on in the fog. Instead of seeing other’s pain, we magnify our own, and it becomes blinding.

The other day, I spoke with a gentleman battling a degenerative disease, and we briefly talked about my daughter. It was the shortest of conversations, but in that moment, I knew that he understood the pain and grief of living with “life-limiting.” I knew that he saw me on my journey. In one simple sentence, he pierced the isolating grief that floats around my life, and I had the privilege of being seen and understood. Grief, depression, loss, pain, these are hard things to live with, but none of us has a monopoly on suffering. Choosing to see beyond our pain to the hurt that others are carrying, is freeing, not from pain, but the isolation it causes. And it’s beautiful when it happens. It’s a light shining, a beacon of hope, not devoid of the fog, but lighting up a halo in the mist, beautiful despite the fog and because of it.