Getting Unstuck

 

Blessed is the man whose strength is in You;

In whose heart are the highways to Zion!

Passing through the valley of Baca

They make it a spring. . . .

                                                                                    -- Psalm 84:5-6

 

One time when she was about 3, our daughter Neely got stuck in the mud, upside down on her trike. She had plunged off our new deck. The front of her Big Wheel was buried in the quagmire. All we could see were her brand-new saddle shoes, waving to and fro.

 

To free herself, she had to step in that mud. She sank into it, shin-deep. By the time I lifted her to the deck, the saddle shoes were concealed in huge blocks of mud, like the Mafia's concrete boots. Boy, was she mad, and boy, did she cry.

 

But she doesn't even remember it now. So we can laugh about it.

 

Getting stuck is no fun. But getting unstuck can be. Eventually.

 

A friend's son got stuck on a tricycle once, too. One of those little go-getters, always in to things, he was riding around in the house during a major remodeling. Well, his foot slipped off the pedal, and he got his chubby little leg stuck in the trike frame, bigtime.

 

He tried to wriggle free, but his leg puffed up like a toad. It's lucky carpenters were on site, for they dismantled the tricycle with him on it while the plumber held him up, and he and his mother both bawled.

 

Again: horrible then, funny now. There was nothing they could do to free themselves; they just had to wait for the grown-ups to come.

 

It's the same way with God and us. Because you know, it's not only kids getting stuck. Last week, I got myself into a pity party over a major problem that I had recently become mired in. It was a mess, and I was sooo hurt. It was complicated and not my fault, but I was in trouble anyway. I cried for hours. I thought I was hopelessly stuck in a tough situation with no way out. I was soooooo mad, I cried myself to sleep.

 

Well, in the middle of the night, our juvenile delinquent dog Sunny was throwing herself against the laundry room door, making a racket. I stumbled downstairs to let her out . . . but apparently because of all that crying, there was so much gunk around my eyelids that they were literally stuck.

 

I had cried them shut! Feeling my way and gradually stretching my gunked-up lids open a slit, I stepped outside in my ancient flannel nightgown as the dog ran around the corner. Blinking stupidly, I looked up at the night sky.

 

It was the most beautiful and brilliant thing I had ever seen: velvet black and sparkling vistas of stars.

 

I rubbed my cried-out eyes with both fists 'til they were wide open, to take it all in, and gawked upward in awe.

 

I didn't hear a voice. But this thought came into my mind:

 

"Don't stay stuck in your grief. Trust Me. I made these stars. Can't you trust Me?"

 

I sucked in my breath. Who said that?

 

Or at least, Who put that thought into my head?

 

I knew darn well Who.

 

Our tender Lord, intervening in my sorry little life to comfort me.

 

That just caused MORE tears, but this time, they were good ones.

 

I slept like a log, and the next day, I opened a book I'd just received in the mail from an online bookstore, "The Stronghold of God" by Francis Frangipane.

 

What do you suppose it flipped open to?

 

Psalm 84:6, about the Valley of Baca - "weeping" - that each of us passes through, when we feel hurt and hopelessly stuck. In our emotion, we forget about hope and faith. If you trust God, then you have the "highway to heaven" right in front of you. That highway is your way out of trouble. And that way out is to trust Him.

 

Go ahead and cry, but trust Him, and your tears can become spring of refreshment: the lubrication for a new attitude, a new start.

 

I'm still stuck in the same situation, but now I know it's not going to last forever. God helped me remember Who's in charge. He's ready, willing and able to wash the mud off my saddle shoes and dismantle my trike to set me free . . . when it's time.

 

Someday, I'll laugh at myself. I was blinded by my own tears, yet standing underneath an awesome night sky while the Maker of the Universe reassured me that things would be OK in my minuscule little world.

 

Happily unstuck, I'll ride my trike off into the sunset. †