Stuck on PAUSE

Do you remember the old VHS players? Yes I said VHS. For some of you, you might be saying “What is a VHS and why does it need a player?” A VHS my dear friends is what we would watch movies on at home before DVDs or Netflix. Same thing just bigger, bulgier and boxy. Anyway, I know we have moved on to the more sophisticated electronics and I am sure that soon DVDs will be obsolete. Back to VHS, if you do remember them you probably also remember when the tape got pulled out or stuck around the inside of the player and you had to carefully, using a butter knife, remove the tape from the player and then slowly re-thread it through the tape. From then on, when you watched that video it would always get a little shaky when it got to the part in the tape that got wrinkled. Or if it was a really old tape and just worn out it would get stuck on pause until you ejected it, wound the tape manually passed that point and put it back in. I sincerely hope I’m not the only one that remembers VHS.

I take you back to yesteryear of electronics and home movies to ask you a simple question. Do you feel like your life is “Stuck On Pause”.
I recently, well really for the past few months have felt like life has been stuck on pause for me. It just seems as though the people around me were continuing on in their stories or “movies”. Their story just kept going while my story was stuck, stuck on pause. I can’t tell you why or how my life got stuck on pause or even if it really was stuck on pause. But what I can share is a revelation I had by realizing I needed to live in the pause to keep my story going.

Like I said, for the last few months I have felt like my life was on pause. I had gotten to a point to where nothing was new. It was all just the same old stuff. Get up, go to work, go workout, go home and go to church. Then I would get up and do it all over again. When I broke my foot and couldn’t workout I still felt like life was on pause. Then even when I moved out of the house I shared with my roommate and her little 17 month old girl (the cutest kid in the world by the way) into a one bedroom apartment, by myself. Life still felt like it was on pause. I was getting so frustrated. I just wanted to see something change. I wanted to see something happen. There was this constant unrest in my spirit. I never could nail it down and tell you what it was but I knew that I needed change and fast or I might just go a little crazy. I was continually praying and asking the Lord about what to do next, where to go next, but still nothing. LIFE WAS STILL ON PAUSE!!

Then through a meeting with a Pastor, an email from around the world in another country, and a 10 minute window of silence at a church service the Lord showed me something. He showed me that sometimes we have to live in the pause so that our story can hit play again.

I realized that in this pause of life I needed to look deeper, into the details of what was right there. I needed to look deeper into the things that had become so common place and so repetitive, so paused in my life. I had grown to hate this pause in my life because I wanted to see life just keep moving. I wanted to hit the play button already. But as these events unfolded in my life and I began to look deeper at the pause I saw different people that have been there through this pause. People who have spoken deep into my heart. people that I loved. I saw people, who in some way, had help mold me into who I am today. As I looked deeper I saw moments that were spent alone and moments that were ordained and coordinated by God. These all were precious moments that I had forgotten about and had taken for granted. As I took the time to live right there in the midst of the pause I became silently content. My prayers changed from desperate pleas for something to change to prayers of thanks for the people and things that were right there in front of me.

I watched a movie the other night and had to pause the movie for a phone call. When I turned back to watch the movie I stopped for just a second before hitting play and looked a little deeper at the scene before me. There were no surprises but I will tell you the detail of that one scene popped off of the screen to me and reminded me that every detail of life is there to had color and depth to your story.

Do you feel like your life is on pause? If yes, take the time to look a little deeper, you never know what you might have missed trying to find the play button.