Mud Puddles

Today is the first day of spring. Most will have you believe you’ll be waking up to tulips poking through the ground, warm sun shining, bright blue sky and birds chirping. Au contraire, there will be record-breaking snow drifts melting, ice sheets turning into small ponds, and rain. It will be cold, gloomy and the trees will still be bare. Heck, it will probably snow again at some point. Did I mention it will rain? Oh, how it will rain! And with that rain comes mud puddles.

We avoid mud at all costs. We walk around the puddles and swerve from double yellow line back to the white line with no regard for on-coming traffic. When did mud stop being fun? We used to scan the grocery store parking lot for the largest body of water then, like a gazelle, we land dead center and soak mom along with any unfortunate bystanders. We would leave for school in clean, dry clothes only to arrive with tennis shoes squishing and bubbling with every step. By the time we return home we have mud caked to the knee of our jeans and all down our back pockets. If it was a particularly good day you’d find the mud crusted in your hair.

In life we avoid the mud puddles too. We’re afraid to get our lives messy. We end up swerving around some of the greatest opportunities to avoid the mess. Try as you might, life just gets down right dirty, messy and disgusting some days. And that’s okay, that’s the sign of a well used life. When life has forced you into the middle of a mud puddle, you’ve always come out the other side and you’ve always been okay. When life gets messy we learn, we grow and we appreciate.

Rather than dodging the mud let’s head straight for it. If we change our attitude and think about the ways a muddy life can benefit us, we might find the adventure fun again. When we’re neck-deep in the mud we appreciate the quiet days where not much happens. But life is boring when it’s clean and that never allows us to grow into better people. When we know what it is like to roll around in the mud we can relate to the friend who is struggling to get out. In that moment we don’t want to be in their situation but we can show empathy.

With empathy we experience the mess together. We take off a little piece of it and we say, “I feel this too and it sucks. But you’ll make it out.” It is so difficult for us to connect with one another because we forget how to use empathy. Not for lack of trying. We’ll say something like “Oh, I know exactly how you feel. Just last year when I…” Our selfish tendencies turn the attention back on ourselves.True empathy focuses on the here and now. We get in that puddle together. We struggle, and slip, and fall and get back up again.

I challenge you to change the heading in your life and aim for the mud puddle you’ve been avoiding. Get a running start and jump right in the middle of it all. It will be messy and difficult. But it will be so amazing when you come home at the end of the day, reach up and feel that dried mud layered deep into your scalp and you’ll have a story to tell. Then, when you’ve come out the other side look on at those of us, neck-deep and struggling in the worst of it, with empathy. Take a deep breath and hop in. Join us in the mess of it all.