JUMPING PUDDLES

When Spring is beginning to break Winter days apart in the Mid-West, there is one thing that you can always count on. The snow melts, the ground starts to unfreeze, and we are left with pools of dirty, oozy mud puddles everywhere. It clings to everything. Shoes, tires, and puppy dog ears take on a sandy coat of it. It alters the color and texture of everything it touches. It is unavoidable. As a mother of 4 busy children who love the outdoors, this time of year is one that requires patience. We graduate from piles of damp snow gear piled at the door to muddy clothing and muddy footprints tracked through the main thoroughfares of my home. Annually it leads me to day dream about the warm days of summer and the simplicity of flip flops and minimal layers of clothing.

While I day dream, my children relish in the joy of stomping in puddles, making squishy sounds as they trudge, and cooking up every mud dessert they can fathom in my backyard. I don’t discourage the behavior. I am a firm believer that the best part of childhood is the right to wildness, getting dirty, and unbounded imagination.  So, while they splash, slide and giggle, I sit back and ponder. Enjoying the sound of happy children.

There is another season of my life that involves mud puddles. It is one that comes and goes as it pleases. One that I experience in isolation. I may pass through years without feeling its affects, or I might have a period of months when I cannot escape it. Often it begins with the rain in my life collecting to the point where the puddles are unavoidable, and I find myself hung up in my own personal puddle jumping season. The roads that I travel then are peppered with bogs shallow and deep, large and small. I am strong enough to leap past many.  I can even dance around some in my galoshes, laughing at the splattered patterns they leave on my once clean clothes.  But every once in a while, I find myself collapsed in a puddle that is bigger than me, unable to move, wondering how I will ever stand up again.

I try to rationalize with myself that I didn’t even see the puddle coming and I must have been to busy rushing ahead. “That must be why I am here,” I tell myself. That must be why I am cold and damp, tired and torn, marooned in my own murkiness. On these days the sun is hard to see, and even though I am surrounded by people I love, I feel alone and stranded. I know how to stand up, shake off the mud, and move on, but I am locked in position. My family can see that I am stuck and make their best efforts to pull me out, but despite their best efforts, I stay. It’s on days like these that I call out to God and beg for relief. It’s on days like these that I turn to Isaiah 49:16 and try to let the words wash over me.

 “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”  

He knows. He understands our helplessness. We can confide in him because he has experienced ALL of our personal pain.  He is aware of the trials, the walls, and the songs of our souls. He gets you and me and our hard stuff, you know, the feelings that can’t seem to just rise out and wash away despite our best efforts. He can’t pull us out of our puddles, but we can allow him to lovingly wrap his arms around us so we are not alone. He can reach us there. There is hope in that. In that there is light, something to cling too.

We are enough, we are never not loved, and we are never alone in Christ. Just as puddle jumping season floods into our lives from time to time, I know that it will also come to an end. There should be no shame in that. Get the help you need. Whether that is on your knees, in your Doctor’s office, or pouring your heart out onto a page.  We can get through this. There is an end eventually, and then we can all stand up out of our puddle. Dry out, shake off, keep on going, or start again. There will be an end to this season too.