Stuckness and Storytelling
When I was growing up the highlight of every summer was camping with our closest family friends, The Eubanks. Sleeping in tents, eating out of coolers, sour dough pancakes in the morning, and roasted hotdogs in the evening created a magical experience. Before climbing into our sleeping bags for the night we would gather around the fire, stars shining in an unobstructed sky, and tell stories.
Sitting on the edge of my teetering lawn chair, sparks bouncing off the burning wood, mosquitos buzzing in my ears, smoke stinging my eyes, and the flickering glow of the fire dancing on our faces transformed our campsite into a place of wonder.
The stories were often nonsensical and transported my ADHD brain to wonderful places where things that didn’t make sense did.
The story I looked forward to the most was told by my mom. Her voice took on a tone of mystery as she began:
“It was a cold, cold night in those old Ozark mountains. The men sat around the campfire and the captain said, ‘Boys let’s have a story’ and the story goes on like this. It was a cold, cold night in those old Ozark mountains. The men sat around the campfire and the captain said, ‘Boys let’s have a story’ and the story goes on like this…”
It thrilled me every time she started. I knew it would be the same simple story but somewhere inside of me I curiously wondered about the possibility of a different turn.
I can almost smell the smoke and feel the heat on my hands from the fire. Those were times I experienced safety, connection, and wholeness.
Once in a while my mom still tells the timeless campfire story. I find myself transported back to a place when life was simple, and I smile.
I am a storyteller, raised by a storyteller, who was raised by a storyteller. Life for my mom and grandma always had a whimsical twist even amid tremendous loss, disappointment, and things that did not make sense. Humor was a key element in the remedy for enduring and continuing forward.
Spinning a good tale became nothing short of an incredibly creative way to cope with life. I learned to take preposterous things occurring in life, add a sarcastic element, embellish a detail here or there, and voile!
I learned sharing my life story made people laugh, gasp in disbelief, fidget, and wonder if I was telling the truth. I loved it! And it kept me laughing at the hard parts of life.
However, over time telling the same stories created a pattern that crossed from a way to manage life, into the way I lived it.
As my story of today intertwined with my story from yesterday, tomorrows story was written before it ever happened. The twisted tales told with sarcasm and delight morphed into a historical novel filled with exaggerated details often taking me from the strong character I believed myself to be to the helpless victim. Immersed in the past made it difficult to create new pages in my story. Repeating old themes in a different place and time offered the illusion I was doing something new.
Unaware but exhausted by the repetition of behavior I finally gave up in the middle of a chapter. The ink ran out of my pen, sarcasm no longer covered my pain, and creativity to spin the story to my advantage was obsolete. I was stuck where my story had the potential for a climatic twist. The turn that makes every good story a masterpiece never happened.
I was metaphorically experiencing life writers block, shutdown, and surrender to my own choices. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to continue writing new and exciting twists and turns I just didn’t know how.
I started looking for ways to creatively move through my block. Jumping from job to job, searching for a good fit in my career, daily self-critical evaluations, and hoping somehow someone or something would resolve my stuckness. I knew my story deserved the desperately needed life changing turn. The turn would help me be the character I always wanted to be.
Stuck is a lonely place. It was difficult to reach out to those reaching out to me so I pulled in. Pulling in is painful because its full of endless words that are nothing more than empty often critical internal dialogue.
I was surrounded by beautiful people, experiencing beautiful moments with them, even cataloging wonder for the “if I just had…then I would be” moment of once again creative living.
Most people didn’t know I was stuck, blocked, and ashamed for not knowing how to be somewhere other than where I was. I lost friends who did not know my truth, overwhelmed people who knew too much of my truth, and worried my family as they rode my emotional pendulum of extreme thinking and overanalyzing life.
I have learned you cannot find who you are through the eyes of someone else. You cannot define your meaning through a career, talent, or idea. You cannot find yourself through the accomplishments of the people you love. And you cannot run from yourself because no matter where you go there you are.
I often marvel when I read inspiring stories of people who beat the odds, achieve greatness, and change the world for good, all because something happened in their lives that sparked an “ah hah!” A climatic shift that altered the trajectory of their story. I patiently waited, and searched for my “ah, hah.”
Time persisted and ticked by and unconsciously I continued to spin my wheels in muddy history. Always in motion but never getting where I really wanted to be. Confused, as the harder I tried the more stuck I became.
It is true if you do what you have always done you will continue to get what you always got. Some of what I continued to get was amazing but the stuckness became even stuckier.
Fortunately, amid the disappointments and challenges I had something special in my back pocket. TRY!
Try was a gift passed on to me from my mom, who learned it from her mom. Strong, brave women who showed me by example that against all odds, even when it does not make sense, or critics give you a bad review keep trying!
A heart that keeps trying cannot help but beat with hope giving life possibility. Try and hope do not go backward only forward.
The past creates steppingstones for what comes next. What has happened does not define me, it is what I do with what happens that does.
My “ah hah” shift has happened one trickle down moment at a time over years of toil and trouble. The excellent times and the gift of try have sustained me while I searched for me.
Worrying about the time I wasted pursuing things I never needed has contributed to my stuckness. Regrets I didn’t figure things out sooner have dampened my spirit. But, in the adventure of life and the story I weave I can bravely say I was never meant to live a symmetrical but an asymmetrical life.
My time in stuckness has been an intricate process of living and eliminating or identifying the pieces that make up quirky, uniquely me.
I have been embarrassed about my decisions, challenges, changes, and lack of finding my place in the world. I have anxiously tried to explain my story to anyone who would listen often oversharing in the process, hoping to be understood. It has taken me decades to appreciate no one can fully understand another’s story because we are constantly judging others from our personal stories not there’s. My place in the world has not been a tangible location or thing but a carry with me wherever I go curiosity. Living in curiosity is my place no matter where I am.
I was born under a wandering star and though I have not accomplished what I thought I wanted; I have made progress in what I needed.
Admittedly in my pursuit of me I have questioned Heavenly Father. Wondering where He is and why He isn’t telling me what to do. After all nothing is too hard for God. But God is an amazing father. He loves us enough to give us gifts to help us on our way but He will not do it for us. If we do not struggle and learn to keep trying we learn to be helpless. He wants us to learn to be powerful in our own lives. He wants us to be like Him. The struggle is not evidence He doesn’t care, it is evidence He does.
Stuck really is a lonely place to be. But I was never alone. God has been with me every step of the way. He has patiently waited for me to come to Him in my weaknesses so He can make them strong.
The pen I believed empty just needed a little shaking to get the ink rolling again. Being stuck is sometimes a place of great value (even if it inconveniently takes decades).
I continue to wander but I am no longer stuck. My north star is God. My drive to keep going is the gift of TRY passed to me through generations. My try produces hope. And living in a world of curiosity keeps me living today and looking forward to tomorrow. I am spending less time dissecting my past and living in experiences that already happened. I found I miss too much in the present when I am busy in the past.
The past can be a partner with regret or the best friend of growth. I know better today than I did yesterday the fires that seemed to burn so ferociously in life did indeed do damage. But the Lord always makes beauty rise from the ashes. The thing that makes the difference is what I decide to look for.
Today is a new day, a new page in my story. I have a pen that works because of try, a knowledge of what I do and do not like because of my past, hope for today because of my belief, and endless possibility because of God.
Today I will wander in wonder still curiously looking for bits and pieces of me. I will grieve the things I have lost and embrace the things I have gained.
I will write my today one sentence at a time viewing life through the lens of the “great adventure that lies ahead.” A style passed down to me by my mom, and her mom. There will be parts of my story I continue to repeat, not because I don’t know better but because the best parts of a story deserve retelling.
So, “Boys! Let’s have a story. And the story goes…”
Write on fellow wanderers! Your story is happening!
Keep trying! And, Just Press On!
PS…Mom and grandma, thanks!