Five Minute Friday no.5

I’m so excited to post a Five Minute Friday post today!  It is such a fun exercise for my writing brain and usually ends up being pretty meaningful!  I love how God works in mysterious ways…I have no clue what the word will be each week, but it usually ends up making me think about the Lord and what He is doing in my life!

I love this five minute writing prompt each week…every Friday there is a new word that we all write about for five minutes…then we share our posts in a linky party…then we get to read what we each thought about the same word…SO FUN!

Today’s word is STUCK.  I had a GREAT night sleep last night, sprayed my bed down with my DIY linen spray (Young Living’s copaiba oil and frankincense), had lavender in my diffuser, and my precious girl slept like a dream (all that lavender on her little feetsies), so this mama feels awake and refreshed this morning!  I am ready to write!  I will set my timer here in a second to five minutes (cause I really don’t like to “cheat” although sometimes I do finish that last sentence or two after the buzzer sounds) and write.  When you are finished here, feel free to click on the picture above and head over to read some other Five Minute Friday posts!

Ready.

Set.

Write.

Stuck.

Have you ever felt stuck?  Have you ever really been stuck?  Like when your car gets stuck in the mud and you have to be pushed out or pulled out by another car.  I am thinking about this time that my Grampa drove into a deep mud puddle and got stuck when I was little…we were WAY UP NORTH in the middle of NOWHERE in the great state of Maine (my home land), driving around looking for moose.  It was early evening, but gradually getting darker and closer to true evening.

The roads we were on were all dirt and filled with bumps and holes and various things to avoid when driving, but my Grampa is a daring man and this puddle didn’t look “too bad” to him!  I was a real little Myriah then (maybe 7 or 8 years old) and I remember my Grampa was on crutches because he had recently had hip surgery.  My cousin was with us (15 or 16 at the time) and my mum and aunt…oh and Sweetie Pie, the tiny poodle dog!

Grampa drove right into the mud and the Izuzu Trooper was STUCK!  Like REALLY STUCK!  I think my dramatic tiny self immediately started bawling! HA!  My Grampa, on crutches, immediately started working, my cousin consoled me, and my mum and aunt went for help!

I was so scared that we would be stuck out in the middle of nowhere, without rescue, and eventually would be eaten by bears!  The drama of an 8 year old!  My daddy wasn’t with us, and folks this was before cell phones okay (not that they would have worked in that region of the woods anyway).

Grampa and Rachael calmed me down and we started to work…I can clear as day remember Grampa on his crutches assessing the situation and directing us girls to collect sticks.  I remember that I didn’t have shoes on, not because of extreme poverty, but because I was camping and in Summer mode of being barefoot!  Thinking about it now I can remember the gravel kind of hurting my feet as I ran to collect wood to throw in the mud under our stuck tires…but somehow the act of doing the job calmed me and dulled the pain…I was a girl on a mission.

Meanwhile my mum and aunt had walked off into the sunset (literally the sun was setting).  Thank God Grampa kept us collecting wood and sticks, so that my mind was taken off my mum and aunt being eaten by wolves and never coming back!

I remember Sweetie Pie yapping and barking from the truck!  This all sounds like it would be a traumatic memory, especially as I write it out now and see it in type, but you know what, it isn’t.  This memory of getting stuck in the mud with Grampa at the wheel has become a fond, fun memory, a story we end up telling when we are all together!  In case you are dying in suspense here, we worked with Grampa for what seemed like HOURS (I don’t know the real time, I was a kid okay, that part is fuzzy) and then we saw a pick up truck coming off in the distance…my mum and aunt were sitting on the tailgate of that pickup…like any good Mainer, they had a winch in their truck and helped us get unstuck!  All ended well, and the event has become a fond family memory!

Okay, at this point I’m just gonna tell you I have been writing for more than 5 minutes…but I gotta get it out!

A couple things we can all take away from this story:

1. When we get stuck, we can’t just lay down and quit.  We gotta keep moving!  Picture my awesome Grampa hobbling around on crutches, working to get the truck unstuck.  He could have just sat in the truck and said “let’s just sit and wait girls”, but he didn’t, he kept moving and kept us moving!  I quickly went from bawling cause I was scared, to enjoying the task at hand!
2. Pray and ask God for help, and then move forward.  My Grampa is a praying man and I am sure he prayed the whole time we were stuck…for our safety, for help, for his daughters to return safely, for his granddaughter to stop bawling…but we didn’t simply pray and just wait for a tow truck to drop from heaven….we used our resources around us!  Sometimes God has already given us answer to prayer or what we need, but we are too “busy” waiting for Him to drop it from the sky to actually look around us!  Did the sticks get us unstuck?  I’m not sure if they even helped at all, but they did occupy us and keep us sane during the wait for help!
3. Ask others for help!  My Grampa is a proud and capable man, even on crutches, but he let my mum and aunt go look for help!  We needed help and that took seeking and asking!

 

Wow!  This has become the longest-winded Five Minute Friday post Ever!  Anyhow, to relate this to now, I felt stuck…not too long ago, I felt stuck in loneliness,  insecurities (that I didn’t even know I had), and isolation!  For awhile I laid down in it and thought about quitting, and I cried (much like the 7 or 8 old version of me) and I prayed but did nothing with what God had already given me.

God is doing something great guys!  He has hooked his winch to my truck and is pulling me out of the mud!  I totally believe God has done and is doing this work in me, but it took me making choices to get up and move, do something toward getting unstuck and asking for help!

I’m so excited about where God is going to “tow” me to as I get more and more unstuck!  Are you feeling stuck today?  Are you praying God will “tow” you out, but at the same time laying in your own pool of tears?  Get up, dry your eyes, and start moving sticks till you see that pickup truck coming off in the distance with help!  Seek the Lord with boldness, and stop acting in fear and ask others for help too (preaching to myself here), be a little vulnerable (like my Grampa on crutches and his two barefooted granddaughters) and put yourself out there!  You can’t expect that pickup truck to pull over and help tow you out, if you don’t wave them down and tell them you are stuck!!

Thanks for reading my five (hundred) minute Friday post today!  Happy weekend!