Slinky Life

Do you remember the Slinky? When those things are first out of the box all the coils lie so beautifully on top of each other- it is fun to play with and bounces back easily.  However… if you stretch it too far, too many times, it is going to bounce on top of itself, get tangled up, and be rendered useless.  Just this week I looked at one of (a)’s Slinky toys and told him I thought he and his friends had played with it a little too hard one too many times.  But yet I put it back on the shelf, because I remembered a Slinky from my own childhood that looked about that rough. 

I remember trying and trying to untangle my Slinky myself, and the mess was just getting worse.  In frustration, I was just going to throw it out because I thought it was beyond repair.  But my dad was watching, and he suggested I bring it to him and let him see if he could help me out.  He pulled out the vice grips he always wore in a pouch on his belt, and he patiently began working to untangle my Slinky.  It was not a quick process, but he was patient with tangles like that, and just kept working at it.  I remember that I went to bed that evening while he was still working on it.  I wasn’t so sure it could be done, but I trusted my dad’s capable hands.  When I awoke the next morning, I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by my dad with the Slinky that he had untangled.  It wasn’t without a little bend here or there in the metal where the kinks had been worked out, but it was back in working order thanks to his loving care.

I can’t lie… there are some areas of my life right now where I feel like a tangled Slinky.  I have been stretched so thin that I am just all tangled up… exhausted, frustrated, out of patience, and barely hanging on by a thread.  And if you have ever played with a Slinky you know this… when it gets tangled on one end, and you try in frustration to fix it… you end up just getting it tangled in more places.  Before long the whole things is a mess.  This week I have been seeing that the frustration and stress I am feeling in some areas of life is beginning to spill over into others… causing more tangles.  Last night with tears in my eyes I sat to take a deep breath (and feed the baby- because in this season I don’t get time to just sit, only sit, and take a deep breath).  As I took that deep breath, I realized that I was feeling tangled in so many areas because I was trying in frustration to fix it all.  It was time to put my mess in the patient hands of someone who could help me untangle my Slinky life. 

Frankly, I don’t have the ability to fix the problems I am feeling.  I’m not in control of many of them, and truthfully, I’m not the cause of most of them… but the way I am reacting to them is the cause of much of my stress.  The thing is, I know someone who can help me untangle my Slinky, and it is time to do what I should have been doing all along… let Him help me.  There will probably still be a bend or dent here or there, because all my stressors aren’t going to magically go away. But I will feel a lot more functional, and there won’t be tangles spilling over into other areas of my life if I hand it over to my Father and let Him help me.  If I trust Him to remind me how to react to situations I can’t control, and let Him guide me in how to stop living in frustration, and just hand him my Slinky life.

“Cast all your anxieties on Him, because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7