Blog 2077 – 06.02.2021

Sometimes People Just Get Stuck

From time to time in life one finds themself or comes across someone else who has just gotten stuck in the mud of disappointment and despair. Often the loss of a loved one especially a child can make reliving the past seem more attractive that experiencing new things. While everyone else goes on with their lives we or that other sad individual person is just stuck.

That first broken heart as a young person if allowed can caused one to miss out on so many, perhaps even better, opportunities for love and happiness. Been there done that, you say. What can one do to get themselves unstuck or to help someone else get pass a seeming irreconcilable problem or loss? First ask yourself or the other person what it is that you or they truly desire.

Often we are so hung up on what we don’t want we that have lost the ability to set new goals for ourselves. When the person or thing we had made so many plans and goals for the future with is no longer there it is no longer just them we lost, but all the future that we hoped to share with them. Every new day, every new thing, seems just a reminder of another day or thing we cannot share together.

As much as it may seem like we died with them we did not and life indeed goes on if we let it but we must figure out a new plan with new goals. Many years ago I remember watching a young cousin play softball. She and her team were quite good and they had an excellent coach who had taught the girls when they missed a throw, a catch, made an error, or could not seemed to connect the bat to the ball and went down swinging, to encourage themselves out loud to “shake it off.”

We have all heard people say things like, “One never forget their first love” or “One never gets over the lost of a parent or especially a child.” We have all probably said or at least thought that ourselves a few times, but it just is not true unless we make it so ourselves. People get over, get past, all kinds of deaths and tragedies in their lives every day. And our particular loss or tragedy is not impossible to get over, under, through, or past. It just takes effort. When what we wanted so much does not work out we have to redirect our desires, our hopes, our plans and we cannot do that so long as we are stuck mourning or reliving what might have been. We have to let it or them go to move on. Or as the coach taught the girls so well, “Shake it off.” Focus on the next catch, the next throw, the next at bat, that is how games are won “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat” and not “getting stuck” over the one that got away from us.

Once when I was a young man with a wife and three young children depending on me to work lots of overtime to pay all the bills and provide what a family needs, I was laid off from a good paying job in the oil industry that had already suffered more than a year of dwindling demand and dropping prices. Jobs were pretty scare. A fellow I had gone to college with and known for several years came up to me after morning church services and smiling said to me, “Aren’t you excited to see what God has in store for you.” I was not comforted by his words. I wanted my good paying job with lots of overtime back, all the bills paid on time, and money to feed, cloth, and take care of my family. I could not see how we were going to make it. I was stuck. We made it through that layoff and several others. And yesterday after a year and a half with no paycheck I am finally back at work again.

For over thirteen years now my daily mantra has been, “I am so glad and grateful that everything that I could ever want or need is already mine and coming to me at just the right time and in just the right way from my loving and infinite source.” And no matter what comes my way I refuse to get stuck for very long. As James Brown said so poetically in his own version of what that great softball couch taught the girls, “Get up off of than thing, shake it, you’ll feel better.”

As the old Irish prayer says, “May the worse of your tomorrows be better than the best of your yesterdays and todays.” Aren’t you excited to see what the Universe has in store for you? If you are not, you can be. Some folks say, “If you want to see God laugh, make plans.” These are the “Shit Happens” or “Murphy’s Law” crowd. I prefer to think of myself in the Psalmist David’s Twenty Third Psalm crowd and not with a cup half full or empty, or worse somebody stole my cup mentality, but a my cup is overflowing guy. That is my slightly skewed view from the way so many see things working for me again.

Not just shit happens, but love, joy, and peace happen too if we keep our eyes on the prize. I am out of cliches for today. Have a great one – well one more.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lk9b4ofvUqDHkgkT06vb4j4tfabX36SS/view?usp=drivesdk

You’ll Never Walk Alone