Posted on September 4, 2026 by Rev. Nathan Grewe, tLMHC
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Several days into my own season of unanswered questions, I noticed something that surprised me. The headaches were certainly exhausting. The doctor’s appointments took time. Waiting for imaging studies and specialist consultations required patience. But what wore me out almost as much as the symptoms themselves was my own mind.
It was always working. Always trying to solve. Always asking another question.
I would wake up in the morning and, before my feet even hit the floor, my mind had already begun its work. How does my head feel today? Is it better? Worse? Did that treatment finally work? Should I try something different? Throughout the day, I found myself checking in again and again. Had the pain shifted? Was the pressure different? Was there a new symptom? I wasn’t trying to be anxious. I was trying to understand. There is a difference.
As the days passed, I realized I had quietly taken on a second full-time job. I had become an investigator. I replayed conversations with physicians, reread test results, organized symptoms into timelines, wondered whether I had forgotten to mention an important detail, and searched for patterns that might finally explain what was happening.
Some of that was entirely appropriate. Good medical care requires paying attention. Doctors need accurate information, and it is wise to notice meaningful changes. But somewhere along the way, I realized there is a difference between gathering information and living inside the investigation.
That realization brought to mind a puzzle.
Imagine sitting at the dining room table with a 1,000-piece puzzle. After hours of work, only four pieces remain missing. You know exactly what the finished picture is supposed to look like. You know those missing pieces exist somewhere. But you cannot find them.
Suddenly, those four missing pieces become all you can see.
You search under the table. You check the box. You look on the floor. You check the box again, because perhaps, against all odds, the puzzle elves returned them while you were making coffee. Before long, the nearly completed picture fades into the background because your attention has become fixed on what is missing.
That is what uncertainty often feels like.
It is not that the puzzle has no picture. It is that our minds are naturally drawn toward the unfinished spaces.
As I continued journaling each day, something began to change. At first, I thought I was keeping a record so I could finally solve the mystery. Over time, however, the journal became something different. It slowed me down enough to separate observation from interpretation.
Instead of immediately deciding what every symptom meant, I could simply notice it, write it down, and leave it there.
One day I noticed the headache became worse in the late afternoon. Another day I realized my neck had become less stiff. Some treatments seemed to help a little. Others did not. None of those observations explained the whole picture, but each was a puzzle piece worth setting on the table instead of trying to force immediately into place.
Some pieces fit together later.
Some still don’t.
I discovered that not every observation demands an immediate conclusion. Sometimes wisdom simply notices. It records. It waits. We often feel pressure to make every experience mean something right away, but life rarely unfolds that neatly.
Perhaps you’ve experienced something similar.
Maybe your unanswered questions have nothing to do with headaches. Perhaps you’ve spent months trying to understand why your anxiety suddenly became overwhelming. Maybe your marriage feels different, and you replay conversations hoping to identify the exact moment things changed. Perhaps you’re caring for a child, grieving a loss, wrestling with your faith, or facing a medical condition that still doesn’t have a clear explanation.
The details may be different, but the process is remarkably similar.
There is good reason for that. Throughout history, paying attention to uncertainty has often protected us. When something feels unresolved, our minds naturally move toward it. They scan for danger, search for patterns, and attempt to fill in the gaps. It is one of the ways God designed us to survive.
The difficulty is that our minds are not very good at recognizing when continued searching has stopped being helpful.
Instead, they quietly assume that if we think just a little harder, remember one more detail, replay one more conversation, or gather one more piece of information, relief must surely be just around the corner.
Sometimes that is true.
Often it isn’t.
One afternoon I caught myself checking in with my headache yet again, not because anything had changed, but simply because my brain had apparently scheduled another status update.
“So,” it seemed to ask, “how’s the headache doing now?”
As though my headache had spent the afternoon preparing a quarterly performance review.
I had to laugh.
The humor didn’t make the pain disappear, but it reminded me that my mind had slipped into autopilot. It was asking the same questions, at the same intervals, expecting a different outcome.
Perhaps you’ve noticed something similar in your own life.
The more we monitor, the more we notice.
The more we notice, the more we wonder.
The more we wonder, the more we monitor.
Without realizing it, we begin running laps around the very questions we are trying to answer.
Jesus spoke to this tendency, not specifically about medical uncertainty, but about our attempts to manage tomorrow through today’s mental effort.
“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:27, ESV)
That question has stayed with me.
Not because Jesus dismisses our concerns. He never minimizes human suffering. Instead, He gently exposes the limits of our striving. There is a difference between concern and control.
Much of my searching was driven by an understandable desire for control. If I could understand everything, perhaps I could manage everything. If I could predict what was coming, perhaps I would not feel so vulnerable.
But uncertainty has a way of reminding us that control is often much smaller than we imagine.
James writes, “You do not know what tomorrow will bring” (James 4:14, ESV). I have to admit, I don’t naturally like that verse. I prefer calendars, plans, and five-step strategies. I’d rather know what next Tuesday looks like. Yet James reminds us that uncertainty is not an exception to life. It is part of life.
Recognizing that has been strangely freeing.
Not because I enjoy uncertainty.
I don’t.
Not because I have stopped looking for answers.
I haven’t.
I still ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. I still pursue appropriate medical care. I still hope for greater clarity.
But I am slowly learning that seeking answers is different from demanding certainty.
One is wise.
The other is impossible.
As I continue walking through my own unanswered questions, I am discovering that peace does not necessarily arrive the moment uncertainty leaves. Sometimes peace begins much earlier. Sometimes it begins when we loosen our grip on the need to solve every mystery before we permit ourselves to live.
In Part 3 of The Season of “I Don’t Know” series, I will explore what happens when an unanswered question quietly becomes the center of our lives. Because the greatest danger of uncertainty may not be that we don’t have all the pieces; it may be that we stop seeing the beautiful picture that is already right in front of us.
Read Part 1: When The Answer Is “We Don’t Know Yet”
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Lutheran Family Service walks with those experiencing difficult times through mental health counseling, marriage counseling, crisis pregnancy counseling, and adoption services.
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