Getting Out of the Mud

It’s been raining all week here in Nashville…

 

The kids were let out of school early one day because of floods. Many high schoolers drive, and the school district wanted to make sure they got home safely. My son Evan Amadeus (being an adventurer, like his parents) took a few friends to drive by our small Harpeth river to experience the rising waters. An extraordinary event on a regular ol’ Wednesday is always an opportunity to feel something different and widen your perspective and it’s fun, too. (It had stopped raining and they were just behind our subdivision, so it was very safe.)

 

Evan safely pulled into a friendly neighbor’s driveway – and parked his little car off to the side a bit so as not to block the entrance. In the grass. A very soft, flooded grass – the kind with dirt (when dry) underneath.

 

“Mama, I got stuck in the mud. What should I do?” Evan told me via his phone. “Wait till it dries” I joked, after I figured out he was safe. “I’ll be right there.” I grabbed my coat and got my friend David to help us. One of Evan’s wheels had dug deep into the mud as the boys tried to use a plank, their brains and what they learned in physics class – all factors that would let them work from a distance and stay clean.

 

And sometimes that does work.

 

But this time, it didn’t. David and I arrived, assessed the situation and got to work. I was excited. This was such a great safe adventure and a learning opportunity 🙂 The plank was not helping anymore, so David shovelled out some dirt around the wheel, told one of the boys to rev up the engine and pushed the car for extra support. I yelled “Evan push with David; it’s only mud!” Mud splashed all over them and the car was out.

 

 

When it’s a wheel and mud on a day when school is out, it’s even fun.

 

But when it’s an emotional pain we are stuck in, no one likes to get into the “mud.” We all desire to stay at a distance and use some magic tool to get us out. We all hope to stay unscathed by the emotional pain so we don’t get in deep. We find a quick tool to help us get out (medicine, or a distraction) – and sometimes that works… But if we don’t get in there and work with the pain, we often dig ourselves even deeper.

 

Evan had called me when he realized he couldn’t deal with the situation by himself. He knew he could trust me – I wouldn’t yell at him, and I would come to help.

 

Just like Evan, when we find ourselves stuck in emotional pain and don’t know how to get out of it, the best thing to do is to call someone who loves us. Someone who won’t tell us it’s our fault that we ended up in a bad place, who will not be afraid to get all muddy with us, and who will come and be our support.

 

Don’t be stuck in the emotional mud. Don’t spin your wheels… Call someone, get help, get all muddy if you have to – working through emotional pain will hurt more at first, but once you are out, you will know two things: where not to “park” any more, and how to get out if you get stuck again.