Having written two books now with a third on it's way, I am intimately familiar with that wonderful demon of creative souls everywhere: writer's block. 

Oh yes, one day you are cranking out pages and pages of good stuff and the next....blank. Blank mind, blank screen, blank page. You're stuck and the more you try to force something out of the stuckedness the more stuck you become. Stuckity-stuck-stuck in Stuckville. I can just imagine Brian Reagan saying that, by the way.

But being "stuck" isn't just a mental state; sometimes it is a state of being stuck financially, romantically, spiritually, physically, etc. 

I think we've all had times in our lives when the road seems closed, the Heavens shut, the way barred and the horizon darkened. We look at the seemingly-never ending path leading up the mountainside and we wonder how do we get passed the obstacles currently in our way. Whether those obstacles be fears, disappointments, heartaches, adversities, loneliness, or what appears to be a complete lack of viable options, our journey seems to be halted and we silently (or verbally...sometimes loudly) ask as Joseph Smith did in Liberty Jail, "Oh God, where art thou?" (D&C 121:1).

I don't think you or I are the first to ever ask that question (nor was Joseph). I wonder if Adam struggled when Cain killed Abel or if Jacob, or Israel, cried out when his sons brought in the "lost" Joseph's coat of many colors . I'm sure that Job did when all those awful calamities came crashing into his life. The scriptures are full of countless stories from the lives of God's greatest who faced what must have at the time looked like impossible odds at the time. When the weight of your current trials gets to heavy and you drop to your knees to plead for Heaven's intervention, take comfort in the fact that millions of souls have sought such help throughout the millennia.

Several Summers ago a dear friend of mine who I have known for a long time returned from what should have been a fun-filled adventure to Lake Powell with a rather large group of single adults. I know she had been looking forward to it for months and to see her so crest-fallen caused me to feel both sad and angry at the same time. 

What had gone so wrong? 

She then proceed to tell me what was eating her up inside: the trip, while filled with well-meaning people, had been full of what she described as "shallow socialness." She related being surrounded by shaved chests, chiseled abs, bleached white teeth, perfect hair, impeccable swimsuits, implants, toned arms, and so on. I'm not saying all that is bad, but the next part irked me. When she talked of the "cliques" and "groups" who (while they would never admit it before God) secretly treated themselves as if they were better than others, as if their looks or popularity gave them some advantage over the "less" physically attractive ones, well, I felt it in the pit of my stomach. She had been marginalized by those who were so focused on having fun that they pushed a dear soul to the sidelines.