008 - Living Unstuck

I gotta be honest, I feel a little stuck.

Not the stuck in traffic kind of stuck; not the stuck in a conversation I realllyyyy want to get out of kind of stuck. No, this is the stuck in a season of life that feels impossible to overcome kind of stuck. Thanks, COVID. It seems like no matter what, I’m waking up to the same circumstances, problems, and struggles day-in and day-out. And I find myself constantly looking to the day when I’ll be unstuck - freed from these circumstances and facing something new.

When the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, they constantly dreamed about getting unstuck – escaping their current situation and embracing a new reality of freedom, liberation, and justice. This wasn’t a “stuck in traffic” kind of situation for the Israelites, either. Their prayers weren’t the simple ones we pray sometimes when stuck in a bad day. No, their groans and cries for help that we read about in Exodus 2 were the collective culmination of several generations living stuck in a hopeless existence. They longed with desperation for the day when they could look back and remember their circumstances as a distant memory before turning forward and reveling in their better life.

I sort of feel this way right now. Do you? Does it sometimes feel like life seems so dark that you find yourself starting to forget what the light in your eyes used to look like? When the only prayers you can muster up sound more like desperate groans? Do you find yourself dreaming about what life will be like once you’re free from this season? A lot of us are there right now, whispering to ourselves, “When this is done...”

Sometimes getting unstuck happens all at once. The traffic clears, the relationship ends, the job changes. But more often than not, getting unstuck happens gradually; over time, we feel less and less stuck in our circumstances, until one day we realize that we’re free from them entirely. And this feeling of freedom is exhilarating and wonderful and relieving.

It’s also scary.

There have been times in my life when I’ve become so accustomed to living stuck that when I finally found myself free, I didn’t know what to do. And while it’s hard to admit, I’ve sometimes found myself wishing to return the circumstances I so desperately desired to get out of; to put back on the shackles that I begged God to remove from my ankles.

The Israelites were no different. When God freed them from Egypt, they didn’t know what to do, and instead of leaning in and figuring out how to live liberated from their previous lifestyle, they leaned away and asked him to return them to Egypt – to their life of pain and suffering and groaning.

Have you ever found yourself wishing to go back when not that long ago, all you wanted was to move forward?

Why do we do this? We so deeply long for our circumstances to change, and then when they do, we complain and wish we could go back to the “good ‘ole days” – even though those days were filled with anguish and destitution and hopelessness. Why do we think we should go back to the way we were living when the way we were living was actually killing us?

Here’s what I’ve learned about living unstuck: it is not easy. Staying unstuck isn’t our natural inclination. There is something uniquely human about our desire for comfort, for the familiar, combined with our fear of the unknown. That’s why we return to those places we prayed for so long to get out of, right? It’s not that those circumstances were good, it’s just that we knew how to live our lives within those confines. And now that we are done with those pieces of our lives, now that freedom is staring us in the face, we can’t help but break eye-contact and fix our eyes on what is now behind us.

Here’s another thing about living unstuck: it is better. Our lives were never intended to be lived from a prison. That isn’t Jesus meant when he said he came to bring us a full life (John 10:10). He didn’t mean full of darkness and captivity and hopelessness. And what Jesus wants you to know right now is that if you will hold on just a little bit longer in this new season of life that is so much better and so much less familiar than your old one, it will be worth it. If you’ll just squint into the sun and resist the urge to run back into the darkness for a little longer, you won’t regret it.

Friends, you may still feel like there are chains on your wrists. Here’s the thing: they’re not attached to anything. The prison door is wide open. You’re free. And if you’ll lean in to this unfamiliar freedom, one day you will look back and remember the time you spent being stuck as a distant memory before turning forward and reveling in your better, unstuck life.

---

Published in the 008 - July 14 issue of TuesdayTribe

Written by Hannah Hladek

Photo by Fuu J on Unsplash