Stuck.

I hate that word. 

Just look at it for a second....

STUCK

It is really an ugly looking word. 

I cannot think of one positive thing about being stuck.



 
                                           



                                                                



The problem is...I get stuck all the time.  

I get stuck in long lines at the grocery store.  No matter which line I choose, I get the line that has the person ahead of me who decides to argue about the price of carrots.  Just yesterday I heard some dude yell at the clerk that they were the reason why our country was going to heck.  Um...sir save the melodrama from yo mama.  If the fact that Wheat Thins are no longer on sale is your biggest problem...then you probably have a pretty good life!

I get stuck in the patterns of thinking.  I sometimes close my information off to new information.

I get stuck on long division problems. 

I get stuck in musical mud.  I must continue to challenge myself to dive into the pool of new music that is out there.  Memo to self:  Music did not end in 1997...and there is new talent that came after Collective Soul.

I get verbally stuck in the 80's.  I am still using "dude" "awesome"  and "rad".  I might as well go buy a skateboard and start worshiping Christian Slater all over again.  Yech.  Those were dark days...

I get stuck in my faith.  I don't recognize the fact that life itself is a miracle.  I believe that God exists.  That is a pretty amazing thing.  I never give that idea any credit.  I give my belief in God's active existence in my life as much daily thought as my need to get a haircut.  Arrogant much, Mr. J-Roe?

I get stuck creatively.  I have been writing quite a bit lately.  But a lot of it is the same ole' crap as I wrote the day before...just with a few different adjectives, characters, or fonts.  I need to stretch myself...I need to take some more risks. 

I get stuck in the idea that success belongs to anyone else but me.  I don't know if you are like me, but there are times when I knowing lie down and let other people do something important because I don't feel as if I deserve to do it.  So apparently I am arrogant in my faith life...but a bowl of jelly in my other undertakings.

I get stuck whenever I read instruction books.  The finest teacher in the world could give me a wonderfully written step by step guide to fix my flat tire (that my truck has had now for a couple weeks) and I could not get past step one.  There is something about my brain that cannot take practical information from a page and make it happen in my life.  That is probably why I had to take my drivers test 328 times when I was younger.  I could not wrap my head around reading about "how to parallel park". 



Being stuck means I am not moving forward...heck it means that I am not even moving backward.  I am frozen in whatever situation I am in. 

The trick is to keep wiggling.  When life gets you stuck in a rut we must keep trying to inch forward as best as we can.  The minute we stop....we get comfortable...and when we get too comfortable we decide that we are better off being stuck. 

Being stuck seemingly implies that we are held against our will in certain situations.  That the "quicksand" of life got in the way of us and our dreams.  The reality is for me however that whatever mud or sand that I have gotten stuck in is only there because I allow it to be.  I am the creator of my mud pits.  I am not a cosmic victim.  I am the architect and builder of my stuck place.  Blaming others/life/God/The President/Aliens/The IRS/Christian Slater only adds more mud. 

Because blaming others makes me feel even more powerless.  And if I am powerless then there is no point in trying to get un-stuck.  It is an easy way out for me.  Choosing to remain stuck is the easy choice.  It requires nothing on my part except just sitting there and complaining. 

Choosing to kick and push through the waist deep mud and gunk is a much harder choice.  It is a choice that leads me to perhaps even more pits to get stuck in.  There is no promise that just because I choose to continue to move forward that I am actually heading in the right direction. 

I guess that is what life is all about.  To choose to keep moving on, even though we might want to give up and accept our life as it. 

The secret to life is not about avoiding being stuck.  The secret is how do we respond when we get stuck. 



Either that or the secret to life is learning how to perfectly smoke a beef brisket for 12 hours on a gas grill.