The painful stuff

The other day I struggled to transplant a small palm tree into a bigger container. The palm had suffered a little in it's current home and developed a few thorns in protest. While shoveling soil into the container, I stuck my finger.

It hurt pretty bad, so I finished up and went inside to find some tweezers. I dug around at the spot for a few minutes, but could not find the thorn. I decided that it had just stuck me, but not broken off inside.

The next morning the spot on my finger was still painful and started to swell slightly. Again, I got out the tweezers and looked for a thorn. Still nothing.

Later that day, it became really red and painful and swollen. This time I squeezed my finger and out popped a tiny sliver of thorn. It had gone straight in and must have been too deep to find by scratching the surface. Once it was out, my finger felt so much better. It was still sore, but much less so. Today there is just a tiny spot to remind me where the thorn went in.

This is true for the painful stuff in our hearts too. Like my body teaches me, I have to get the thorns out. If I had ignored my finger, things could have gotten so much worse.

I am working on it.