You will be found
James Corden was my favorite late night television show host. When he hosted The Late Late Show, his antics made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe and fight back tears. During a unique episode hosted during the COVID-19 pandemic, I teared up for a reason I never expected.
I was parked on the couch alongside my family with our quarantine snacks of choice (vanilla ice cream and a steaming cup of tea for me).
I was impressed by how Corden deftly and delicately addressed the crisis at hand with honesty and hope, while video chatting with some of the world’s most renowned singers, magicians, and comedians, all from his makeshift garage studio. A thick lump formed in my throat when Andrea Bocelli obliterated “Time to Say Goodbye” from his home piano in Tuscany, interspersed with footage of Italians dancing on their balconies. I swallowed hard and powered through.
Before the final commercial break, Corden said he would close the program with a performance (not previously announced) from the cast of the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen. If I had not already drained my mug of decaf Lady Grey, I know I would have choked on it.
The musical centers around Evan Hansen, a 17-year-old high school misfit who wants nothing more than to be wanted. I had a hunch that The Late Late Show would feature the show’s powerhouse anthem, the lyrics of which had swirled aimlessly amid my mind for the last two-and-a-half weeks of self-quarantine.
Sure enough, Corden virtually introduced myriad self-quarantined members, past and present, of the Dear Evan Hansen Broadway cast to sing “You Will Be Found” (watch it here).
“Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you felt forgotten, in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear.
Oh, someone will come running and I know,
They’ll take you home.
Even when the dark comes crashing through,
when you need a friend to carry you,
and when you’re broken on the ground,
you will be found.”
I wept.
During those first few weeks of COVID, the skydiving economy, the suspension of the sacraments, and the host of other crises, it was been really hard for me to find God. I had seen God pull good out of suffering, and I knew He was doing the same then. Though the emerging stories of human solidarity had inspired my head, they had not made me feel a whole lot closer to Him in my heart.
The words of this song showed me where I’d gone wrong. I had been trying to find Him. And I could not go to all the places that I usually look.
I could not go to Mass. I could not go to Confession. I could not go adoration. I could not even sit before the red flame illuminating a golden tabernacle in an empty church.
I could not find Him. But in that instant, I realized: I had to let Him find me.
I had to abandon my hopes, my plans, my designs for how to encounter Him and just sit and let Him find me.
My heroine in heaven St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote: “I am not always faithful, but I never get discouraged. I abandon myself into the arms of Jesus and there, find again all that I have lost and much more besides.”
Through late-night television, the Lord gave me the two words that I knew He wanted me to pray during this trial: find me.
When I am anxious, hopeless, and despairing,
find me.
When I worry that I will live a shorter earthly life than I had hoped,
find me.
When I fear that those I love most will suffer and leave me for God’s arms,
find me.
When I despair that I’ve loved Him well enough to merit eternal life,
find me.
In the ensuing years since the pandemic, these words still bring me deep consolation. Because with everything I am, everything I have, and from the deepest core of my being I know: He will always find me.