STUCK

Rodents in your walls will drive you mad. Crazy mad. My husband bought every trap the big box home store sold. Our critter was smart and somehow bypassed the traps and scurried up pipes into the wall beside our bed. Each night she scampered back and forth repetitively. She was making trips from the outside of our house to the inside of our wall, nesting. One night I punched my husband and screamed, “Go get her!” He rushed to the basement and the known point of entry. There was a showdown. My brave warrior husband with flashlight and long stick and a squirrel caught in headlights, frozen with fear, the battle began. The squirrel mustered up enough courage to run but my husband’s stick was long. He speared her. (Sorry animal lovers, but two weeks of no sleep and the chance of a wall filled with rodents drive one to extreme measures.) To our dismay one of the sticky traps left out caught two baby sparrows. I managed to free one but the other fought my efforts. With every wiggle she glued down further. Then her legs broke. The beak and another wing went down in the unforgivable glue. I tried to free her. She breathed her last. I fought back tears and recalled that “His eye is on the sparrow.” I’ve met folks like the squirrel. They try to plant roots where they don’t belong. They run themselves crazy trying to be where they shouldn’t. Those closest to them get exhausted with the perpetual frantic panic that ensues. The end of their story doesn’t include, “And they lived happily, ever after.” Then there are the sparrows. These are the innocents who wonder off course out of curiosity. They get stuck in places, with people, or substances that trap them. The submissive ones yield to those who provide rescue. The stubborn ones resist. One is freed (never the less with a bit of glue that reminds them to stay away from danger). However, those who resist a graceful rescue, stay stuck. Until a willingness to get out of the clutching trap occurs, there is a war. We watch, wait, and pray. We can’t get them out of stuck. There is a death to self will that frees us from stuck and leads to living, to a life worth living. Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done.”