Living with Uncertainty Part 4

August 28, 2026

The plane was about to take off.

We were leaving our troubles behind—at least for a little while—to go sailing for the first time in our lives. For two weeks, we would help our friends Lois and Billy sail their thirty-six-foot boat in the Virgin Islands. They were experienced sailors. Lark and I were not. We were simply grateful to be going somewhere new, somewhere far away from the sorrow and exhaustion that had overtaken our lives.

Lark and I had been married for seven years, and for the last several of those years we had tried desperately to have a child. We had undergone medical procedures, attempted in vitro fertilization, and endured the heartbreak of a miscarriage. Month after month, hope would rise, only to collapse again.

The experience had drained us emotionally and spiritually. We had done everything we knew to do, and still the deepest longing of our hearts remained unfulfilled. Finally, we prayed what I have come to call the prayer of relinquishment:

“God, we are weary. We do not know what else to do. We have done everything we can to have a child, and both of us carry within our souls the deep desire to become parents. Please bring us a child—or remove this desire from our souls.” There are moments in life when such a prayer is not spoken from spiritual strength but from utter exhaustion. We were spent—so spent that we were finally willing to release even our most cherished hope.

Relinquishment did not mean that we no longer wanted a child. Nor did it mean that our grief had disappeared. It meant that we could no longer make our peace dependent upon receiving the outcome we desired. So, somehow, even in our youth, we sensed that if we placed our lives in God’s hands, whatever came next could still contain meaning. We did not know where our lives were going, but we trusted that surrender might align us with a wisdom greater than our own.

Certain memories remain attached to sounds, aromas, and sensations. I can still remember boarding that airplane to the islands. There I was fastening my seat belt, and feeling the force from the forward thrust press me back into my seat as the plane gathered speed and lifted from the runway. At that very moment, Barry Manilow’s song I Made It Through the Rain began playing through the airplane’s sound system. For me the timing was more than synchronistic; it was a direct blessing from the Divine.

The rain, for us, had been the long season of longing, disappointment, medical procedures, grief, and dashed hopes. We had not escaped it unchanged. But through the prayer of relinquishment, something within us had shifted. We were no longer struggling to force life into the form we believed it must take. We were ready for our new lives in whatever form they took. We had made it through the rain! 

The prayer created a liminal space—a threshold between the life we had imagined and the life that had not yet revealed itself. We were suspended between what had been lost and what might still be given. We could not see what lay ahead, but for the first time in a long while, we were able to travel toward it with open hands.

We sailed through the Caribbean, carried by winds we could neither manufacture nor control. Perhaps that is why sailing became such a fitting image for that period of our lives. A sailor cannot command the wind. A sailor can only become attentive to it, adjust the sails, and allow the boat to be carried forward. When we returned home, a telephone call was waiting for us.

A child was to be born the following month—a child whom we would be given the opportunity to adopt. We had made it through the rain and entered the next chapter of our lives.

Little did we know that the prayer of relinquishment would become one we would pray many more times. Life would again bring circumstances we could not control, losses we could not prevent, and futures we could not foresee. Relinquishment is not a bargain with God. It does not guarantee that events will unfold as we hope. It is the courageous act of releasing our demand for certainty while remaining open to grace.

Sometimes the future we receive is different from the future we imagined. Yet when we loosen our grip on how life must be, we may discover that uncertainty is not merely a space. It can also be the sacred place where an unforeseen life is waiting to be born.

Spiritual Practice and Inquiry‍ ‍

Listen to the lyrics of Barry Manilow’s song “I Made It Through the Rain.” What lyrics of this song might strike a chord in you? Now, describe those feelings in light of some challenging circumstance you made it through. Describe the faith and strength you relied on to come through the rain in your life. 

Prayer‍ ‍

Dear God, help us to make it through all the rains facing us.

Amen