Just Make Scrambled Eggs: How to Get Moving When You’re Stuck

Her wisdom has echoed in my ears every day since I walked away from that prison.

It’s the simple truths that stick to your soul, sweet like honey.

“Just make scrambled eggs,” she advised her friend, and all of us that were circled around her nodded in awe and agreement. We all knew just what she meant. This beautiful, Spirit-filled felon soothed her friend’s fear of the unknown with one simple, life-changing truth:

“Just do the next thing you know how to do.”

There’s this space that can be just as difficult to bear as battling pain and suffering:

a time when you don’t know where you’re going or what to do next;

when the rug of familiarity is pulled from underneath your feet.

Perhaps the winds have been blowing so strong for so long they’ve left you bent over, even though the storm has retreated. Maybe you forgot how to stand straight and stretch toward the open sky; toward new opportunities and unknown possibilities.

Perhaps life has clotheslined you: one day you are running full speed ahead with certainty, the next you are on the ground staring up at the sky, wondering how you got there.

For my friend who had spent over a decade in the same environment, standing straight again is overwhelming. She spent years, eyes to the ground, feeling like this moment would never come.

Now this long-awaited day is here. The possibilities are endless, as are the unknowns, and to her, that is terrifying.

What will she do when she walks away from these walls? Where will she go? What will she say to her loved ones? The questions bounced around her mind like pinballs in a pinball machine.

I don’t know what to tell her as I listen and my heart aches for her. I pray silently for wisdom as she speaks, tears streaming down her face.

Then came the words I will never forget. The words spill from our unexpected adviser’s mouth as if she is confused by our lack of wisdom.

“Just make scrambled eggs.”

I half expected her to end with, “…duh!” which we really deserved.

When I taught our daughters to cook, the first thing I taught them to make was scrambled eggs. They are simple, nourishing, and delicious – a perfect thing to start with. So when our group’s wise counselor laid out that sweet truth, everything in me wanted to laugh aloud in agreement.

When she leaves everything she’s known for years and enters the unknown, she’ll do the next thing. She’ll make her son scrambled eggs.

How I needed this truth so many times in my life when I felt paralyzed with the fear of the unknown or the unexpected. When life dealt a card I wasn’t prepared for.

When you stand back up straight for the first time in awhile, you take a deep breath and take the first, small step and trust God to put solid ground under your feet.

You fix your eyes on your perfect Guide and Savior, love the ones He puts in front of you,

and then…make scrambled eggs.