No way. Do you feel like you’re out of options? Have you given up all hope of getting out of the situation you’re in?

On Friday our long awaited sofa for the extension upstairs arrived. Well, sort of. They couldn’t fit it through the door of the new room. So downstairs it came again. The delivery men left me staring at that wretched piece of furniture sitting in the wrong room. What on earth were we going to do now?

Well, we contacted family and friends and yesterday afternoon, our sofa was lifted through the upstairs window by a group of kind people. Moral of the story? Don’t despair. Help is there if you ask.

Most days I face a stuck sofa situation and most days I try to struggle through, usually unsatisfactorily. Do you ever do that? I know it’s easier if you can get things sorted by yourself but sometimes that is just not possible. It is annoying, especially if you’re an introvert like me, to bring others into your life, but it is almost always a helpful experience. I made myself a coffee earlier and realised how much better it would have been if someone else had made it for me. When I was sitting on my new sofa today I could have said it again: getting help is worth it

There’s a song I remember from my teenage years that says ‘God will make a way when there seems to be no way’. Often that happens through the people around you, so keep asking and see how impossible situations can be turned around.

I am very aware that some things do not work out the way you think they should. At painful times like that, we need friends more than ever to stay by us and remind us that in the darkness, we are not alone. I pray that you know that too, when all hope seems to have gone and all ways are closed for you.

All I can say in those impossible times is what I do: look to our Father and ask friends to help you find a way through. As it says in Isaiah, ‘See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.’ God knows all about stuck sofas and He knows how to get them/us out too.