When Life Gets Squishy
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
My husband and I had set out for a walk, a perfectly reasonable and wholesome activity. Somewhere along the way, we decided to take the shortcut across the pasture. How bad could it be? Famous last words. After all, we should have known better. We live in Wales, where the rain doesn't just fall; it moves in, unpacks its bags, and stays for weeks.
We hadn't taken more than a few steps into that field before the trouble started. The ground, which had looked solid a few steps away from the gate, was anything but. With every step across that field, our boots sank into the soft, saturated earth with a noise that can only be described as squishy. The mud grabbed at our feet like it had a personal vendetta. The more we struggled forward, the deeper we seemed to sink. At one point, I was fairly certain the Welsh countryside was going to swallow me whole, and they'd find me years later, preserved in peat, still wearing my hiking boots.
We made it through eventually, but not without considerable effort, more than a few choice words of complaint, and a healthy respect for what rain and time can do to what looks like solid ground.
And isn't that just life?
We've all been there. Not necessarily in a waterlogged Welsh pasture, but in seasons where the ground beneath us simply refuses to cooperate. We start out with a plan. We see the destination. We take a step toward it, and suddenly, we're not moving forward so much as we're just... sinking. Life gets squishy. Things that looked stable turn out to be anything but. Each step requires twice the effort and yields half the progress. And somehow, the harder we struggle, the deeper we seem to get stuck.
The Bible is no stranger to this image. The psalmist cried out in Psalm 40, "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings" (Psalm 40:2). David knew something about sinking. He'd been in the pit, the deep, soul-sucking kind of mire where there is no traction, no footing, and no way forward in your own strength.
But notice what he said: He brought me up. Not I climbed, but rather, He lifted.
That's the detail we miss when we're exhausted and sinking. We keep trying to haul ourselves out by sheer determination, as if the right strategy or the right attitude will finally give us a solid footing. But miry clay doesn't respond to determination. It just takes more of you down with it. The only way out of the mire is to stop thrashing and let Someone stronger do the lifting.
There's a second thing I noticed in that Welsh pasture: most of the ground looked fine from where we were standing before we stepped into it. It's a sobering reminder that we are genuinely terrible judges of what's solid. We decide based on appearances, on what seems reasonable from where we stand, and then we step out and find ourselves ankle-deep in consequences we didn't anticipate. Proverbs 14:12 says it plainly: "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Our instincts are not always to be trusted. The shortcut is not always the shortcut.
So what do we do when life is squishy? When every step is exhausting, and we can't seem to make forward progress? When we're not sinking dramatically, just slowly, steadily, one soggy step at a time?
We cry out to the One who sets our feet on a rock. We stop trusting the appearance of the ground and start trusting the Guide who can see where the solid path actually lies. We accept that some seasons are just going to be messy, and the point is not to stay clean. It's to keep moving toward the One who is waiting on the other side of the field.
My boots were in a sorry state by the time we crossed that pasture. But we got through it.
You will too.