Making Friends with Mud

It's been one of those months where I feel like I am getting pushed down into the dirt, again and again, just to gather myself, get my two feet under me, and get slapped back down into the mud. Basically, the mud and I are becoming friends. 

My knees are scrapped. arms are dirty. ego bruised. abilities questioned. 

But I scrap and fight and learn and rise up. again and again. 

March is kicking my butt personally and professionally. Whether it is projects going slower than I want and learning tough lessons at work or failing to communicate well with my husband, my butt is officially kicked. And it just feels hard to get up. 

Here is what I am learning through my mud friendship/butt-kicking:

We all know you learn through failure. We learn a lot when we are knee deep in mud. So in some ways, letting the mud shape me and change me are great. I mean otherwise, you would find me standing, tears streaming, facing my husband, using a less than pleasant voice tone to make a point again and again without learning a lesson (oh wait, that still happens and I still make that mistake all the time. I guess that lesson is taking longer to learn than others)

What is difficult for me is not letting those buttkickings distract me from my identity. 

You know the reason why getting pushed into the mud is so hard for me? For you?

Because we value the wrong things. It wouldn't be so hard to fail and find myself in the dirt time and time again if I rembered where my true value came from- being a daughter of God. 

But how often do I forget... How often do I place trust in my own abilities, skills, and success? And when those fail me... No wonder I am so distraught!! I put my faith in myself rather than a God who is greater than all my strengths and all my troubles. 

If my identity were not so clearly wrapped up in my success of failure, then getting pushed in the mud would simply become an opportunity to learn. But that's not how it feels. 

And that's when I realize just how much I try and rely on my own strength. And that's just when I need this verse to bring me hope again...

"Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord.

For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness....Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord.

For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought...." Jeremiah 17:5-8

We don't have to be shrubs in a desert (yeah! Take that shrubs in deserts!). How beautiful is the imagery of a tree with deep roots in life-giving water. I want to be rooted in that goodness. And I want to stand tall, feet planted, and look up to God for strength. 

(This is one of many photos that I have where people catch me trying to soak up the sun. But it's pretty much the same stance I picture as trying to be a tree, rather than a shrub. And it's a heck a lot cuter than a photo representative of me "face down in the mud all pissy about how things are not going well". Sometimes I spare you those details :))

The times when I get pushed in the mud and find it most difficult are the times I am acting like a shrub. the times I am finding my strength in my own talents or putting my hope in other people. 

But when I remember I am a tree, I don't have to worry about lack of water or that projects don't go well or that I mess up or that it feels hard to stand up from the pile of dirt in which I am laying. I can make friends with mud and face failure because I am rooted in God and can trust that this too will pass. And even if it doesn't, and even when I am face down in the mud, He sustains me. He is enough.