Stuck

June 27, 2018

Sometimes we just get stuck. It happens regularly to me. Last winter when I was plowing, I managed to get the tractor off the driveway into the sloping ground and soft snow to the side. When I put it into reverse, I just sat spinning all four wheels. It reminded me of Pappy Okerlund whose house we now own. He was the village mechanic, tough, old school, as crusty as they come. When I bought my first four wheel drive truck, he looked at it scornfully. He was a WWII veteran of the Pacific Theater. “I’m not working on any of that Jap crap,” was all he said before walking away disgustedly. I couldn’t blame him, after what he had been through. He turned around with a parting shot. “The only thing about four wheel drive is that when you’re stuck, you’re REALLY stuck! Trust me, you’ll do something stupid and get stuck.” Yeah, I got stuck. But with my tractor. Fortunately, I knew how to leverage the bucket and slowly push my way out.

It’s getting stuck in life that causes me the most trouble. I spend a great deal of my life there, wanting to move ahead, to be better, but not making discernible progress. Stuck. Sometimes it’s my own weaknesses, my lack of self-discipline, my failure to remember who I am in Christ, stupid decisions I made. When that happens, getting out is up to me. I have to change habits, choose to use my time more wisely, evaluate where I am and how I got there, and do things differently.

But sometimes we are stuck through no fault of our own. Yesterday as I was driving home from Canada, I got stuck in Toronto traffic. I traveled most of the way around the city on the ETR, an expensive bypass to the 401 that goes through the heart of the city. They call it rush hour traffic, but no one is ever rushing. They are standing still. Most any time of day, the 401 is the epitome of rush hour traffic. The only time I want to be on it is 3:00 am on a weekend. So I coughed up the big bucks and drove the ETR. It was wonderful until we had to merge with the QEW on the west side of the city. Immediately when I hit the exit lane, traffic stopped dead. I was stuck. Couldn’t move. It took forty minutes to go about half a mile. It wasn’t my fault.

Sometimes in life when we’re stuck, it isn’t our fault. We just happen to be in the middle of a place where nothing is moving. Christians often pray fervently for revival, and it doesn’t come. They are stuck in a time and place beyond their control. We keep praying, but the traffic isn’t moving. Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in life’s situations; a bad marriage, a dead-end job, health issues that won’t go away, someone who betrays a confidence, a wayward child who consistently ignores good advice. Pick your own “stuckness.” Sometimes, it isn’t you. It’s where you are. Where God has placed you. We can rail against it, curse it, beat our heads against it, but we remain stuck. Sometimes, the only way to handle being stuck is patient endurance. The New Testament alone has 33 references to our need of patience. Those verses wouldn’t be there if God intended to instantly rescue us from difficulty every time we utter a prayer for deliverance. 

If I am stuck due to my own negligence, I need to change my ways. But if I am stuck because it’s where God has placed me, alongside many others who are also stuck, but who lack the patience to deal effectively with their “stuckness,” I need to develop my patience and endurance, to learn the lessons that only come when we’re stuck and can’t get out. Tonight, I am grateful for the traffic that made me ponder my soul. I have felt stuck lately. Most of it is due to things I can and must change, but when the other kind comes along, may I have wisdom to recognize God’s plan, and grace and strength enough to learn from it, and perhaps even to help another one of my fellow travelers who is stuck in traffic alongside me.