Feeling Stuck? The Lost Sheep and the Barbed Wire

It’s starting to turn dark. The daytime light is fading. You have struggled with all your might to find release but it’s no good. You’re snared on the barbed wire. And the more you struggle, the more the barbed wire digs in deep and searing pain shoots through your body. You had a Good Shepherd but you have thrown away all of your blessings. Here in the dark you begin to whimper because it feels that all is lost. You have lost your joy. You have lost friendship and companionship. And worst of all you feel completely devoid of all hope. You don’t know where you are and there is no sign of any help. As the darkness settles in over you, any sense of hope evaporates.

Oh that you could be with the flock again, where you felt safe and secure. The Good Shepherd could always be relied on to lead us all beside the still waters and onto the fresh green pastures. But all of these memories were to no avail now. You were stuck. You were in a deep rut. And to be honest, it was all your fault. You should never have wandered from the path. Thoughts of self-recrimination and regret flood into your mind. How could you have been so stubborn and foolish?! What possessed you to take your eyes off the One you could always rely on to look after you?! In the biting cold it will only be a matter of time before exposure and hypothermia take your last breath.
As you slip in and out of consciousness a faint dreamlike state takes you away and into the far distance you look at what seems like a faint flicker of light before all is dark and sleep overtakes you.
Half asleep, frostbitten and peering around you feel yourself being lifted and moved and disturbed. It must be the predators of the night who have come to have their way. But no. There are only gentle hands that pick you up. Gentle and kind hands place you over shoulders and you begin to be carried. What’s happening to this lost and broken soul? Your mind flits from thought to thought. This doesn’t make any sense at all.
It just cannot be true. Has the Good Shepherd left the 99 just for you? Has his mind been so preoccupied with your safety that he spent the entire night scrabbling around in the darkness until he found you? Yes. It’s true. Lifted up on his shoulders with wounds on your side you see the first glimmers of dawn on the horizon. He came for you. The lost sheep has been found and the Good Shepherd is filled with joy.
If we extend the metaphor of this story we can perhaps begin to understand how the experience of the lost sheep can relate to mindfulness and afflictive or ruminative thought patterns.  Shaun Lambert says that part of mindful awareness can involve "unwrapping the barbed wire of ruminative thought stories about yourself from your self in order to experiences & release them". This image of being snared by the barbed wire of our own afflictive thinking is graphic and runs in parallel to the experience of the lost sheep. It's possible for us to journey in our minds to an afflictive place where we feel trapped and hopeless because of our own ingrained ruminative thinking patterns. 

But the story of the lost sheep is also the story of the kind, compassionate, gentle and Good Shepherd.  When we turn to him and look to him and listen to him we find that he lifts us up and out of our afflictive snare.  He carries us up and out of affliction in order to restore our souls. The green pastures and still waters are where he leads us.

Richard H H Johnston

Director of Christian Mindfulness

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