Unstuck

 

Day 8 - Unstuck

Today as I walked my dog on the first evening cool enough to need a jacket, I pondered my day. And as I did so I saw how three unrelated events converged today to form a theme: unstuck. 

Lately we have been having plumbing problems. Two of our three toilets have not been flushing well, when they've been flushing at all. We even had a plumber come to look at them, but that day they behaved, so he couldn't' see that anything was wrong. Today the problem worsened. After my shower I realized that my toilet had leaked onto the bathroom floor. And none of the toilets worked. The problem turned out to be a broken pump on our mechanical sewer. The water we were sending into our sewer had no place to go. It was stuck. And so it backed up in a smelly mess on my bathroom floor. Thanks to a hard-working plumber, the pump has been replaced and our drains are free to flow out once again.

As I went to Target to check if a shelf I want was on sale (It wasn't.), I noticed the entrance was backed up. Initially I assumed that a large and slow group of people were going in at the same time, but, as I neared the entrance, I realized that people had slowed down or stopped to try helping a bird that was stuck in the entry area. The bird was scared and wouldn't fly back out, and it eventually flew into a window and dazed itself. After this it sat just inside the store, not moving. I tried pushing a cart in front of it, hoping it would turn around and go back out, but it still did not move. Another shopper had a great idea to trap it in a shopping basket. We used two of the baskets to make a cage and released the bird outside, where it flew away.

Our weather has been stuck on hot and humid since May, but the first real cool front of fall came over the weekend. The air was pleasantly cool(er) and dry, perfect for an evening walk. I know we'll probably get more hot and humid before October is over, but this taste of fall is a beautiful reminder that we won't be stuck with hot and humid forever.

As I pondered this theme of unstuck, I thought about how these situations apply to my life.

Like our plumbing, sometimes I let some icky stuff get stuck in my life. My emotions can't move freely, and I sometimes spill my stuck emotions out where they don't belong, making a stinking mess. To fix things I have to let God deal with the root issue and replace any faulty thinking I've allowed. I must allow Him to get rid of things like resentment, unforgiveness, self-righteousness, and pride and replace them with love and grace. Then my stuck emotions can begin to freely flow again.

Like the bird at Target, sometimes I make a bad decision and end up in a situation I can't manage to find my way out of. And the more I struggle, the more disoriented I become. If I will finally rest and trust, God can help me find my way to where I belong. Sometimes that may seem restrictive, like our shopping basket cage, but it will bring eventual freedom.

And sometimes when I get stuck the only thing I can do is wait. God does give us seasons where we may feel stuck. I'm sure Joseph felt that way in prison. Moses must have felt like that in Midian. This isn't a stuck in sin but a stuck in waiting mode. And if I do wait on the Lord, He will bring change in His timing. And when He does, it will be refreshing, like a cool(ish) walk under beautiful stars and a brilliant crescent moon.