Rutception

Have you ever been stuck in a rut?  Of course you have, I know that I have many times in my life.  I know that often I find myself unusually bummed, the cup is not even half-empty, it has no water in it at all and there is no water for miles around.  Exhaustion and discouragement entangle me as I try to find any slice of light, any way to find optimism and meaning in life again.  Somehow in a rut everything is dark and desperate.  As hard as you try to escape, the walls are too steep, the climb too tough.  You sit in utter darkness at the bottom because the light is eclipsed by the sheer depth of the rut.  The worse part is that you don't find ruts, they often find you and that one unknowing misstep plunges you deep into darkness never to see the light of day.

Often times when I am in a rut I try to identify the source of this rut that I am in.  Asking myself, why am I in this rut?  What is wrong that I need to fix to help me out?  Here is the problem with ruts, often times when we think we have found a solution and fixed something and we feel good for a day or 2.  The "rutish" feelings come back, and sometimes stronger than before.  Meanwhile we just fought to get out of a rut and ended back up in one again.  Sometimes it is the same one and other times it is a different rut.  This is very discouraging for the average person, as you could imagine, and very troubling for the average thinker who thinks "how in the world am I in a rut after just getting out of one?"       One Word

Rutception.  All you who are following me give me a holler!!  You see I am convinced that many depressed, hurt, and unproductive people are stuck in rutception.  They may have started in a simple rut many years ago... Insecurity, low self-esteem, self-doubt, infidelity and pride.  Lets call this the emotional rut.  As this emotional rut continued to get deeper and deeper, deeper ruts began to grow within this emotional/foundational rut.  Things like negative thoughts about oneself, lack of positivity, Loss of dreams, death of idealism, and fear of success are thoughts found in this rut.  This second rut we'll call the cognitive rut.  As these ruts continue to deepen and widen a 3rd rut develops within the first 2 and that is the physical rut.  This is where we start to really notice that we are physically in a rut; sickness, depression, laziness, lack of motivation and unhealthy internalizing of emotion are behaviors of those stuck in the 3rd rut.  There is one final rut, this is the scariest one to find yourself in.  You literally have no motivation and the depth of the rut can be so deep that it would be overwhelming, its the comatose rut.  This is the deadliest rut to be stuck in, symptoms include; deep depression, no desire to live, being in a constant state of stasis, and ultimately premature death.

I ask the question, have you ever feel like that you have pulled yourself out of a rut and end some kind of bad habit but yet find yourself back in a rut again?  Well that is because you never really got out of the rut at all.  You got out of the rut of laziness, but you never climbed out of your fear of success rut.  That is why you still feel like you are in a rut... Because you are!  And if you never figure this out then you are going to eventually fall back into the laziness rut because you are stuck in fear of success.  And if you conquer those 2, you still have to confront your self-doubt in the emotional/foundational uppermost rut or else you will never truly be out of the ruts of your life.

Here is why it is cool to be a Christian.  God wants to guide you out of the ruts and show you the emotional/foundational rut that you need to confront in order to truly live a rutless life.  If you struggle with self doubt, then God can show you that you are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus.  That you are truly valued by Him.  I am writing this, so that you could have help to identify 2 things. 1. That you aren't alone in the midst of the rut. 2 there is a loophole and escape out of the depths of even the deepest ruts, and that is through the guidance and validation of who you are in Christ.

Rutception, the perpetual loop of  ruts that one finds their self in unless they find whom they are and whose they are, and find their confidence in Him.