The Price For Freedom – Poke My Thumb With A Needle

Today I was vacuuming…

When I emptied the dirt into the trash can, I ran my thumb into something sharp but I didn’t notice what it was.

For the rest of the day, my thumb pulsated.  I didn’t give it much attention until I tucked Chocolate Buddy and Strawberry Sweetie into bed for the night.

It was then that I scrutinized my thumb, wondering what had happened…

I recalled a small piece of broken glass where I’d vacuumed.  That must be it!  A piece of glass was stuck in my thumb.

The thought of poking a needle into my thumb to take it out was too much for me at the time (I was tired from the day, Prince Faithful was off at Tahoe with the college kids, and I’d slept an average of 6 hours a night this week).

I wondered if I could just let it stay in there and eventually it’ll come out, right?  Besides, the glass is a clear color, so it’s much harder to see than a brown wood splinter.  If I were to take out the piece of glass from my thumb, I wouldn’t know where to poke the needle…what if I had to poke around my whole thumb?!  Yikes.

Yeah.  I’ll just leave it in there.

But every time I rubbed against it, it hurt.  It wasn’t unbearable, so I let it be a few more times.

Until it happened one too many times…

AND I decided enough was enough!

During the process of digging out my own “glass splinter” I received a few lessons:

1.  I had to LOCATE the pain in order to find the cause – which was the glass.  To get to it, I had to actively put pressure on different spots of my thumb to locate where the most pain was felt.  This extra pressure hurt a lot more!

2.  The cause of the pain was hidden. It was buried in my skin and I didn’t know where.  I had to be persistent to get to the root of it, because it was hurting more and more just to even find it…

3.  I valued getting it out more than leaving it in – even though I was uncomfortable with the needle.  Getting it out NOW hurts more NOW but it’s just for a moment.  Leaving it in hurts a little but it’s a constant irritant that’s not good for my thumb in the long run.

What a valuable experience to remind me – Emotional Pain Is The Same Way!

It takes courage to LOCATE the pain, endurance to get through the extra pressure and pain, and persistence to get to the root cause of the original pain.

Only with emotional pain, it’s not as obvious.  After all, it’s not as visible to the physical eye.

In the end, is it worth it to get to the root of emotional or physical pain?  Yes!

Will we be completely free of pain?  Not this side of heaven.  But…

Being in touch with our pain does give us freedom!  It allows healing.

And it brings the gift of new life.

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Tags: freedom, pain