"It's scary when I get stuck behind the couch..."

"...but it feels good to wiggle out and be free!" ~Sunny (3)

Thankful, we are, to wiggle out.

To become free of that which crowds us, traps us, suffocates us.

I have often felt "stuck" behind the crowding "couch" situations of life.

Stuck in the cycle of life and the never-ending mundane dishes and laundry and bills and messes. Stuck in relationships that seem to no longer flourish. Stuck at a table with family or friends when there is an argument or huge elephant in the room that is begging to be brought into life but that no one is brave enough to address. Stuck in a job that didn't feed my soul. Stuck in a college major with no real vision for life-work. Stuck in a lonely space with people all around me...

Where does gratitude come from in these "stuck" spaces? Does it come at the end of the chapter, when you have cried and sulked and prayed and screamed and clawed your way to be, at last, "unstuck?"

No.

I have learned, from my "stuckness" that we don't have to wait for that "happy ending" to feel gratitude.

It comes most powerfully in the moments when you feel SO jammed against that wall that you feel like you can't breathe...and you utter a desperate prayer and you suddenly feel not so alone behind that couch. You relax a bit, take a deep breath, feel your insides calm and your soul melt into peace as if someone is whispering "I love you, I've got you" into the depths of your stuck, broken, spirit.

It comes in the form of the random but much needed kind words of a stranger, an unexpected hug and "I love you" from a busy toddler, or warm sunlight streaming in illuminating the precious faces of your sleeping babies. It comes to us in the midst of our stuck situation, whatever it may be.

And we learn, one "stuck" day at a time, to take it slow. To not worry about tomorrow, but to turn our eyes and hearts to heaven for today, and open our clenched fists to receive those small gifts and to just. keep. reaching.

It's in the reach, from our stuck places, that we receive.

Don't stop reaching.

One day, you will find yourself free of that which held you captive, and you will reflect on your time spent "stuck" and realize you were never alone behind that cold couch.

And you will marvel, with tears of joy and awe, at how while you were wedged into that tiny space between the couch and the wall, you traveled so very far. 

. . . 

So today, I am grateful for the many couches in my life that I have been "stuck" behind, and the freedom that comes not just in the release, but in the "wiggling."

Where the spirit of the Lord is

there is freedom.

2 Corinthians 3:17