Somewhere in the Middle

Have you ever felt like you are stuck somewhere in the middle of, leaving one season of your life and heading toward the next?

I know I have.

When I got up today I felt like I was stuck. I had my list of “to do’s” all laid out before me, I felt like I had left yesterday behind me, but I could not get moving into today! I quickly rationalized my uneasy feeling away with thoughts like, “It’s been a crazy year. No one knows what day it is! Everyone is feeling stuck right now!!”

 I attempted to do my morning routine; time with the Lord, exercise, make some food, but I couldn’t shake my feeling of stuck! So I decided to look up the definition of the word stuck to see if that might shed some light on my situation….it made it clear as mud. Which ironically is one of the examples of its meaning, as in “stuck in the mud.” It actually said, “An example of stuck is being trapped in mud.” As I read and reread this example I started feeling a connection to this meaning. Yes, that is exactly what I am feeling! Like I’m trapped in this place of neither here, nor there, I’m somewhere in between and I can’t move!

 Then it hit me. Being in that somewhere in the middle of neither here nor there is still somewhere. It’s that place in the middle, on the bridge between where you were and where you need to be. I imagine it’s like one of those suspended bridges that stretch out over a vast open space of nothingness. While you are on it every gust of wind seems as if it’s trying to blow you off. The bridge rocks and sways. You do the death grip on the rope railing because you’re convinced it could fling you out into the great abyss waiting below you. So you sit. After a while the swaying of the bridge doesn’t seem so rickety and risky. You can’t be knocked off of your feet because you are sitting. You’re not pressing on, head down, eyes on where you are going, your actually comfortable in the lullaby the wind is blowing.

 This revelation that I’m actually stuck in the middle between what I left behind and where I so desperately want to be, hit me hard today. I wanted to have something to blame for my condition of being “stuck.” I didn’t want to look at my sitting on the bridge as something I actually choose to do! I was forced to, right!? The wind was to strong, it surely would have blown me right over, and  that rope railing-it’s a rotting old mess. I’m pretty sure if I grab it it’s going to  disintegrate and then where would I be! I was forced to sit down. The fact that I am secretly making it comfortable for myself here has nothing to do with why I am feeling stuck…… here….. with myself.

I think the first step in becoming “unstuck” is to admit that maybe a part of my being stuck is on me. Not a blame game kind of “on me”, but a, “I’m ready to next level up my life kind of on me.”

Accountability is key. You have to have things you must accomplish to get to where it is you are going. A check list, a daily routine, goals and time-lines to keep you moving. Accountability is key, but so is perspective. I have found when it’s all accountability and no perspective I get overwhelmed at the tasks ahead. They start to feel like the blowing wind is almost pushing me off my feet. Sometimes it feels like endless work that gets us nowhere. As if the wind is so strong its blowing us back to where we started. So we sit. It doesn’t feel so overwhelming when we sit, but when we see the middle as “good enough” we can get comfortable and lulled into a sense of, “its enough.” Then that goal/dream/ or thing we must do is left floating in the hazy distant future undone, unaccomplished! It becomes the heavy feeling we are carrying right there where we are sitting stuck in the middle of not quit making it to where we are going. It’s no wonder we are feeling stuck, we’ve got the weight of our future holding us down. That’s the problem with allowing the middle to poise as the finish, it can’t ever give us that feeling of fulfillment because we are only half way there!

You are not alone.

We have all been in this place, feeling tired, like you have been working hard and you’re going nowhere. When we see ourselves sitting in that place of stuck in the middle, we can convince ourselves that those dreams and goals we had were never going to happen. So we quit. Trying to tell ourselves that the middle was always the goal. We see our lives as limited instead of limitless. That feeling of defeat can be crushing.

This is not the way your story goes, it’s not how my story goes either. Find someone who will not only hold you accountable to get things done to keep you moving forward, but will also give you the perspective that says, “Look at how far you’ve come!”

 If you find yourself in that place of somewhere in the middle of where you’ve been and where you are going, don’t sit down and get comfortable. The middle isn’t your destination! It’s just where you are right now to show you  how much you have already done, to be able to get to your future goals and dreams.