It happens to the best of us. We get stuck.
And it’s inconvenient and maybe embarrassing. And possibly painful.
We get stuck in difficult situations. Dilemmas that test us. Spotlights that terrify us.
We get stuck in traffic, stuck in debt, stuck in toxic relationships.
So frustrating, right?
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A few days ago our tomcat Geoffrey got himself stuck in the layered wire ceiling/roof of the chicken coop yard.
Poor Geoffrey. It’s not uncommon for him to spend all night in the coop with the chickens and geese, as he is a great nighttime hunter but not at all interested in the flock. In fact, he’s probably in more danger from them than they are from him. Often we release the birds at sunrise only to find him bolting out at high speed, ears flattened and eyes wide, having been hiding in some corner, probably either from Johnny Cash the violent gander or Randall the Redneck Rooster. But this morning was the first time we’d found him in quite such a predicament. Stuck. So stuck. Handsome had to loose our fluffy boy from his wiry womb and sooth his frazzled little feline nerves. Happily, Geoffrey was uninjured. Just embarrassed and a little stressed.
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When you’re stuck, how do you cope?
You can rail violently against your circumstances, throwing little fits and pouting,
at your leisure expounding on all the injustice thwarting your obviously good and noble efforts.
(You can spin your wheels, basically, which is the first natural thing we all tend to do.)
Or you can calm down, be very still in mind and body, and take a deep, cleansing breath.
You can focus on what is going right, what is going really well in fact, and cultivate again that seed of gratitude.
You can let the anxiety fall quietly away and gather instead all the positive energy available to you.
Consciously remember that you have vast resources within you and around you,
resources that can change your circumstances in amazing ways.
Reach out in prayer. Faithful prayer. Harness your imagination.
Then start to work.
Do the first simple task in front of you. Do it really well.
Then do another thing.
And another.
And keep moving.
Be so filled with momentum and living energy that old anxieties and worries cannot distract you.
Just keep choosing to see the Light and continue working.
Trust that you are being helped in unseen, supernatural ways, because you absolutely are.
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Geoffrey is fine now, by the way. He shook off that stuck stress quickly and was in a minute dreaming up his next big tomcat adventure. My heart tells me he was thankful for Handsome’s intervention. But it also tells me that deep down Geoffrey knew help would eventually come.
Interrupt anxiety with gratitude.
Do your part.
Trust.
XOXOXO