How Do You Have Faith When You Can’t See What Comes Next?

Reading time: about 8 minutes, with a three card spread at the end.

A woman’s voice screamed my name in the middle of the night. I sat up in a room full of smoke, in an apartment I’d lived in for three weeks, with no idea whether I’d make it out.

I did. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about faith: from that fire, from the weeks with no bookings after I started reading full time, from clients who’ve called me while facing the end of their lives.

If the road ahead has gone dark for you, whether after a loss, a diagnosis, a breakup or a leap you can’t take back, you’re not alone. You belong here. Let’s walk through it together.

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What Does It Mean to Have Faith in the Unknown?

Trust, not a guarantee

Faith, to me, is trust in the unknown. It’s trusting the process even when the process won’t show you its plan.

Call it God, the universe, the creator, whatever feels right to you. The name matters less than the knowing underneath it: there’s a much larger plan at work. You’re here for a reason, still alive for a reason.

What’s the Difference Between Faith and Blind Optimism?

Feel it all

Blind optimism insists everything will work out. I can’t promise you that, because life doesn’t always unfold that way. Pretending it does can make every pitfall sting more.

Faith asks something different of you. It lets you feel every feeling as it surfaces: the fear, the grief, the dread. Somewhere under all of it, you’re still held.

Dark chapters are part of the design; they teach us to appreciate what we already have.

Why Does Not Knowing Feel So Frightening?

Control is fear in disguise

When the future goes dark, the mind reaches for control. That grip comes from fear, which comes from the ego.

Surrender comes from God, the spark that lives inside each of us. Researchers even have a name for the struggle: intolerance of uncertainty, which is closely tied to anxiety.

If you can’t tell whether a feeling is fear or a genuine nudge, this guide to intuition versus anxiety will help you sort the two.

How Do You Keep Going When Nothing Is Happening?

The leap I almost doubted

When I first started reading tarot full time, I was terrified. There was no going back to what I once did.

Some weeks there were no bookings at all. I worried clients wouldn’t come. I wondered if I’d made a mistake.

What got me through was writing, pages of it, just to empty my head. I told myself, “If this is meant to work out, doors will open.” They did. Research on expressive writing backs up what I felt: putting fear on paper loosens its grip.

If you feel a pull toward something, follow it, even before you can see where it leads.

Purpose is smaller than you think

Many people believe purpose has to change the world. To me, purpose looks like picking up litter you pass on the sidewalk, being gentle with a small insect, offering compassion whenever a moment allows. Selfless acts, done without wanting anything back, align you with what you’re here to do. The Greater Good Science Center has found kindness feeds our own wellbeing too.

Is Divine Timing Real?

From eye roll to awe

I used to roll my eyes at those two words. Divine timing felt like the plot twist in a science fiction movie where it turns out to be aliens: anything can happen, which explains nothing.

What changed my mind was living it. No psychic on earth can tell you exactly why something happens, or when. That belongs to the creator.

Divine timing shows up as being in the right place, finding the right book, hearing the right words, meeting the right person at the right moment. If you’ve lost someone, you know the feeling: tiny details line up so precisely that you wonder if you’re imagining it.

The voice in the smoke

I was nineteen, maybe twenty, three weeks into my first apartment: an attic room in an old house split into units. Around two in the morning I smelled burnt toast, assumed a neighbour was cooking, then drifted back to sleep.

Then a woman’s voice screamed my name. I sat straight up. The lights wouldn’t turn on. I held my flip phone up to my face, and in its blue glow I could see the smoke.

When I opened the hatch, heat hit my eyes like sand. I dropped to the floor. My shoes had melted where I’d left them, my feet were burning, I got out through a window.

In my mind’s eye, the voice came with an image: my grandmother, lit up against the darkness. I never met her; she died at thirty eight. She was a medium too.

The next morning I borrowed pants from a friend, then went to work, because I had to keep going. Soon after, someone at the café offered me a restaurant job, which led to years of work with people. Every little thing worked out after that.

What fire can never take

Survivor’s guilt hit later. One night at a friend’s place, a wave of sadness pulled me up onto the rooftop with a notebook. I looked at the stars and wrote at the top of the page: “These are the things fire can never take.”

Then I listed everything that brought me joy, everything I remembered myself to be. I still return to that list.

What Are People Really Asking When They’re Afraid of What’s Next?

“Am I going to be okay?”

Clients come to me after a loss, a diagnosis, a breakup. The question they say out loud is rarely the real one. Underneath, it’s almost always: Am I going to be okay? Will my life continue? Do I exist beyond this moment?

Early in my full time work, a young woman called me from a hospital bed. She was terminally ill. I’d expected a mediumship reading, so my heart sank when I understood.

She’d been deeply harmed by people close to her, harm that had shortened her life. She couldn’t forgive them, and wanted to know if her soul would be okay carrying all of that with her.

Here’s what I told her: “Your soul doesn’t belong to you. It never has.” You return home without the pain, the anguish, the hurt. Those stay here. You go back to what you came from, which is love in its entirety.

I think about her often. That call is part of what pulled me toward hospice volunteering.

Everything in this life is temporary. Not even tattoos are permanent. We came here to learn about love in all its messiness, through the illusion of separation, to remember that we’re all one.

People who’ve had near death experiences describe it the same way: peaceful, safe, warm, like finally coming home. Researchers at the University of Virginia have documented these accounts for decades. Even if you don’t believe in an afterlife, you came from somewhere. That’s where we return.

How Do You Practise Faith Every Day?

A walk, a wish, a surprise

Every morning I go for a walk. I picture everyone carrying grief, or feelings they can’t quite make peace with, and I imagine that weight lifting off their shoulders. I see it in my mind’s eye. I let myself feel it.

There’s a second practice I lean on when a situation feels hopeless. It comes from A Course in Miracles: picture someone you don’t think deserves it finding everything they’re looking for.

See them finding solace, comfort, things finally working out. Want it for them, wholeheartedly. It isn’t about them, really; the practice softens your own resentment, the denser part of yourself, which is often what’s blocking your path. Research on loving kindness practices shows that wishing others well genuinely shifts how connected we feel.

That last one matters most. Always leave room in your life for a pleasant surprise. Clear a moment in your day to wander, to notice, to let life meet you halfway.

Is There a Tarot Spread for Faith in the Unknown?

The Faith in the Unknown spread

For my fellow tarot readers, this one’s for you. If you don’t read tarot, each position works as a journal prompt.

Position one isn’t a warning; naming your fear takes away some of its power. Your anchor sits in position two, where even a heavier card points to a strength you’ve already proven. The last card asks you to stay open, since the answer may arrive as a person, a phrase, a door you didn’t expect.

Four cards echo this theme beautifully if they appear: the Fool (0), stepping forward without a map; the Hanged Man (XII), surrender as a choice; the Wheel of Fortune (X), timing beyond your control; the Star (XVII), hope after the storm.

Every card is waiting in the complete tarot glossary.

Where Can I Read More About Trust and Surrender?

Follow the one that pulls at you most:

• Letting go: Why surrender
• Steady ground: Staying grounded
• Fearing death: Easing fear
• Hospice wisdom: Ten lessons
• One love: Separation illusion
• Feeling stuck: Five questions

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About the Author

Chris Bennett, known as The Tarot Medium, is a psychic medium, tarot reader and hospice volunteer whose approach is rooted in steadiness, clear perception, deep respect for what people are actually living through. His work is precise rather than dramatic, emotionally attuned without drifting into abstraction, honest without excess, often giving language to things people have sensed for a long time but couldn’t quite articulate. He reads online for clients across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and beyond, always beside therapy, never in place of it.