QUAGMIRE

Thanks to the blessed fact that toddlers need naps, I was talking to God just now about an area of my life that has felt like one endlessly deep and life-sucking quagmire. For a long time I had tried to ignore it, to pretend it didn't exist, and just keep walking on with my life. But after a few years, when He finally compelled me to look around my feet again, I realized that I had made no progress at all, and in fact, my body had only sunk deeper into the whole mess because of my insistence on moving my legs around all the time. So finally, this past summer, I held my breath and took the first courageous step of acknowledging that I was, indeed, in a quagmire. "The only way out is through" became my mantra. So, I've been working with God these past 6 months or so in the slow and sticky process of getting out of this quagmire. This has involved a lot of just sitting there, allowing myself to experience the whole range and depth of sensations that a quagmire has to offer, and only moving when and how He tells me to. I've made some definite progress, and can tell that I'm not as deep as I used to be, but still, it is no fun being in a mudpit. This morning I was feeling acutely that old, frustrating stuck-ness, and so I decided to do a Biblegateway-search for verses involving mud, mire, muck, and mess (since unfortunately "quagmire" isn't anywhere in the Bible). Here's some of the highlights:

Job 30:16
"And now my life drains out, as suffering seizes and grips me hard. Night gnaws at my bones; the pain never lets up. I am tied hand and foot, my neck in a noose. I twist and turn. Thrown facedown in the muck, I'm a muddy mess, inside and out.

Psalm 69:14
Rescue me from the mud; don’t let me sink any deeper! Save me from those who hate me,and pull me from these deep waters.

Proverbs 17:15
Whitewashing bad people and throwing mud on good people are equally abhorrent to God.

Job 30:19
He throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes.

Psalm 30:1
[ A David Psalm ] I give you all the credit, God— you got me out of that mess, you didn't let my foes gloat.

Lamentations 3:16
He ground my face into the gravel. He pounded me into the mud. I gave up on life altogether. I've forgotten what the good life is like. I said to myself, "This is it. I'm finished. God is a lost cause."

Psalm 71:1
I run for dear life to God, I'll never live to regret it. Do what you do so well: get me out of this mess and up on my feet. Put your ear to the ground and listen, give me space for salvation. Be a guest room where I can retreat; you said your door was always open! You're my salvation—my vast, granite fortress.

Isaiah 57:20
But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.

John 9:6-7 (New Living Translation)
6 Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. 7 He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing!

Psalm 40:2
He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

Psalm 40:16
But all who are hunting for you— oh, let them sing and be happy. Let those who know what you're all about tell the world you're great and not quitting. And me? I'm a mess. I'm nothing and have nothing: make something of me. You can do it; you've got what it takes— but God, don't put it off.


...Despair, deliverance, sin, desperation, healing - welcome to the world of mud and muck in the Bible. All in all, it makes me feel like I'm not alone in finding the quagmire analogy to be really appropriate. It also makes me feel justified in my hope that God can and will get me out of this mess, in His own timing, in His own way. In fact, if He wants, He can even use some of this mud to heal me. That's what I'm hoping for, and in the meantime, I'll continue sitting in my quagmire until God decides I'm ready to be done with it. I really hope it's soon.