I'm Stuck

"Dad, I'm stuck!", drew my attention to the left on the playground as I was pushing my squealing daughter on the swings.  My mother's instinct to attend to the needs of a child and tendency to be nosey, even if it is just visual, drew me in the direction of what I heard.  My eyes found the little boy that I heard perched on top of a large jungle gym made out of a maze of ropes and pulleys anchored to large wooden poles.  He looked like a cricket with a baseball cap sitting on top of the world's largest ball of twine. 

His father called out to him from across the playground as he started walking toward him.  "Just start climbing down, son."  Even as the words came out, the little boy started shifting back and forth on his perch, holding on for dear life.

"I can't.  I'm stuck."  My heart rate picked up as I watched him.  The more his father yelled out to him to just come down the more he seemed to dig his feet into the ropes he was standing on.  It was as if he was frozen in place.  His father stood at the bottom, looking up and him and shading his eyes from the son as he tried to coach his son down from the top of the jungle gym.

"Just put your foot over there and grasp on to that rope and climb down!"

"I can't."

"Yes, you can. You got up there and now you can get yourself back down."

"I can't."

"Son, why can't you?"

"I'm scared."

Isn't that it with most things we are paralyzed by?  I don't know how many times we remain stuck in the same place, same relationships, same job, same situations.   When the pace of my heart quickened as I listened to the little boy tell his dad that he was stuck, I wasn't worried about his safety.  My body was remembering what that kind of anxiety feels like and responded.  It was familiar. 

I remember one relationship I was in that made me miserable.  I lamented to my friends often about how unhappy this person made me.  I didn't see any hope for a happy future with him.  Despite the tension of misery followed by gifts and promises to be better from now on, nothing changed.  I knew it was not going to but I continued to play the game.  On more than five occasions, friends told me to end the relationship.  Just leave him.  I couldn't.  I had reasons, I had excuses.  We shared a house, we shared bills.  What about our friends?  What about the dog?  No, our lives were too intertwined.  It wasn't that though.  None of the reasons were valid.  I wasn't imprisoned by this situation.  I was afraid to change it. 

Fear of change seems to be something most people suffer from.  I am no different.  Change equals new and feels scary.  I know.  I am learning too but I feel as though my life has changed so much in the last two years that maybe I am just getting desensitized to it.  Maybe it just takes climbing the jungle gyms of life enough times to know that we can do it without falling.  Hands and feet could slip.  Maybe our baseball cap falls to the ground as we make your way up or down but we can pick it up later.   We see other people climbing on the same jungle gym too, they seem okay but when it comes to us we can envision cataclysmic disaster in an instant.  In an effort to avoid calamity we don't move.  I know I've made mistakes, big ones too but I'm still here to tell you about them.  Funny thing is, the more we fall down, the better we get at climbing. 

Emotional Hijacking

Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest -Matthew 11:28

The sound of the dripping from the roof and the dullness of the light in the room as I awoke was a disappointing realization that it was raining outside. I had heard a comment from a friend that it was going to be rainy all weekend but I dismissed the news as only one report and in New England, weather forecasts are more of an opinion than a predictable fact.

With a groaning sigh that she was correct, I turned from one side to another and was greeted by my beaming, tweeting 4 year old, "Good Morning, Mama!"

She brings the sunshine where there is none normally but I was not in the mood to have my disposition changed before coffee. "Good Morning, Honey."

I rolled out and stood up, shuffling to my Keurig to make an emergency cup of coffee. My three cups failed to produce any lift in my personality. I had promised Carli the night before that we'd go out for breakfast so I showered, dressed, got her together and we went to a sweet little local diner for a mouse-shaped pancake. After a year and a half, we finally ate and paid the bill. I was not any better for having to wait so long for a simple morning meal and I was furthered in my downward spiral by the day ahead of errands and house cleaning.

With a huff, I drove us to the grocery store. Normally Carli and I have a great time of grocery shopping. She stands up underneath me on the bottom rack of the cart and hooks her arms around mine. She goes on and on talking to me while we cruise up and down the aisles and she tells me what we need on her list. Today I just wanted to get it done.

My day didn't change much. I had to clean the house and Carli wanted to play and spend time with me. I was irritated. I became further annoyed by my attitude. What was with me? I seemed so intolerant of anything derailing my mission for total house cleanliness. It did finally get done but not without yelling and a low lying headache.

After Carli went to bed, I did my kickboxing workout and headed for the shower. There can be nothing so refreshing as a nice shower after a good sweat. I reflected on my day. My jaw felt tight, my neck stiff. Why was I so tense? Was I angry? No. Lonely? No. Did I feel like I was missing out on something? No. The answer froze me for a moment as the hot water rolled off my back. I was worried.

Worry is the single worst day ruiner there is next to being hungover. I couldn't have told you all day what the problem was but taking out some aggression in punching the air and kicking the wind got my defenses down enough to see it. I am not anxious for anything that is actually going on in my life. There is no crisis, no bad news of any note. I am worried about the future. Worried that I don't have any income coming in, worried about Carli's schooling, worried about my book, worried about my t-shirt business. I have great things going and things that can produce a lot of wealth and an eleviation to my concerns for my daughter's schooling. I have no idea what the future holds but I know one thing, I can do nothing to change it. The future is His to know and His alone. I have to trust that He loves me more than my own mother and His will is stronger than anything that could try to come against me.

In taking on worry, I walked away from the love and trust I have in God. I decided that I needed to handle and figure things out, not give them to Him and trust in His goodness. Since when do I have the power to manipulate all things? Hasn't happened yet. So why worry? I had to say I was sorry. Even if my roof comes off tonight while I sleep, He'll still provide a solution. The only thing I gained was a wasted day of grousing went I could have been making the most of a dreary day with my Little Sunshine.