Stuck

by Heidi Biehler

I’ve always liked winter more than summer, until this week. One morning, my car got stuck in the driveway as I was trying to leave for work. My first thought was, “I wish my dad was here to fix this!” Unfortunately, he lives 2 hours away and obviously couldn’t come to my rescue. So, I went in the garage and got a shovel to dig the snow away from my car. I shoveled and tried to drive away, but only got a couple inches farther. Back to the shoveling. Again, I only got the car to move a few more inches. This process repeated many times…shoveling and then driving a few inches. I was getting really frustrated (and still wishing my dad could’ve been there. Dads can fix anything!) Half an hour later, I successfully drove out of the driveway! I made it to work, but very late. As I drove, I thought, “summer needs to get here. I don’t want to have to shovel my car out of the drive way again!”

While I was at work that day, thinking about how the morning had started, I was reminded of sin. Sin? Yes, sin. Sometimes I can get stuck in sin, just as my car was stuck in snow (getting stuck in sin frustrates me, too, just like I was with my car). When I get stuck in a certain sin, I try to overcome it, and make progress, only to find myself sinning again. So, I’ll attempt again to overcome that sin. I’ll make some progress, and then sin again. The cycle repeats for a while, until I completely recover from the habitual sin. I’ve found that sin can be very hard to overcome. I often need to pray about it, memorize scripture about it, have a friend keep me accountable, and possibly seek some advice and help.

I’m writing this to encourage you…you might be frustrated that you can’t stop sinning. My advice- don’t give up! Keep fighting and persevering. From my experience, sin doesn’t go away with the first try. I have to keep fighting it.