A Sharp Nail...

I am far from perfect.  As you probably read in a previous post I talked about my insecurity issues as well as some of my anxiety issues. We all look at social media at times and see our friend's  posts mostly  showing the good & fun times (especially if you are looking at their pictures).  How often do you see a post with horrible pictures?  I know I am guilty, I don't like to post bad pictures of my family or myself.   We tend to put our best foot forward, we want the world to see us in our best light.

The other morning I was running, I felt this pain on the side of my toe.  I knew what it was immediately.  I had just given myself a pedicure not long before and must have not removed a sharp spot on one of my toenails.  That nail must have grown enough that when I stepped it hit the side of the next toe.  Each step I took I felt the sharp stabbing pain.  Ooh it hurt!  I thought to myself, "When I get to the top of the dam I should sit down one of the benches and see if I can remove the sharp spot..."

 I bit my lip the whole mile and a half until I reached the dam.  It hurt soooooo bad!!!  Then my stubborn streak started brewing the closer I got to the benches and I started thinking, "If I step a certain way it won't hurt as bad, then I won't have to stop and take my shoe & sock off, and I can  just keep going." So  I adjusted my step & stride and it did help, just a tiny bit!

I ran to my car,  finishing up  seven and a half miles, that morning, I thought my toe was going to fall off! The throbbing didn't stop the whole drive home, I took my sneakers off in the garage and put them on the shoe dryer, hobbled into the house, and as I was getting ready to head up the stairs to shower I bent down to remove my socks & realized I had a trail of blood on the floor.  My white sock was now a red sock.  My toe was completely torn apart because of a tiny sharp edge on my toe nail.

I have also done a similar thing with a small piece of gravel.  Somehow a small and even almost microscopic piece  gets in the shoe and I am too stubborn to stop to remove it and I end up with a huge blister or a bloody foot. You would think that I would learn my lesson by now!

The little things in our lives, like the sharp nail or the gravel,  may not seem like a huge deal but when we don't deal with them immediately they slowly start to tear us apart and before we know it the small wound can become huge and out of control.

Dealing with physical & mental pain has been just something I have learned to do since I was a teenager. I am a "people pleaser".  So I try to keep peace as well as if anyone ever said hurtful things to me or about me,  I just pretended I had thick skin and dealt with it.  Or if I didn't like a situation I would just bottle up my emotions until one day I would explode (not very healthy by the way). An example of physical pain: I remember back when I was a teenager I didn't want to have shoulder surgery.  My left arm was pretty much just hanging on, I could rotate it almost a full 380 degrees and couldn't feel my fingers at times as the pain would shoot up and down my arm and radiate down my back.  Until finally my parents surprised me the day before Christmas by telling me I was having surgery to repair the torn and stretched-out ligaments in two days (WHAT A GREAT CHRISTMAS GIFT!!! Not!)   Then the following fall, I fell on it playing field hockey and re-injured it, I definitely didn't want to have surgery again.  So, I dealt with the pain for well over a year before my parents insisted on surgery again.

And then there were the ovarian cysts that I had dealt with rupturing from the time I was about sixteen or so.  It got to the point that I just would crawl in a ball and pray the pain would go away at times.  The pain medications wouldn't always take it away. There was no use complaining because that only made the pain worse.

The one thing I learned to do is to try to NEVER complain to others about the pain.  Yes there are times someone like my mom or husband may notice that I was or am in pain or not feeling well and they will start talking to me about it & then  I may whine; but being in daily pain I have  just learn to deal or maybe even adjust to it.  I found that if I put a smile on my face it helps some and the more I focus on the pain the worse it becomes, kind-of like the sharp toenail, I kept running on it and when I changed my positioning of how I landed on it, ignoring the pain and focusing on something else the pain didn't go away but it made it more bearable.
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This all being said, I have lots of examples of of how a something so small could cause so much hurt, but today a story comes to mind...it is from our beach trip the other week,  A drive that should have taken about four hours took well over 5.  I packed the car the night before hoping that we could leave bright and early and be at the beach before lunch hopefully by ten or eleven o'clock.  I  woke up with yet another migraine, Pudge (one of our cats) realized "something was up" and decided she wasn't happy so she peed on a throw rug (UGH!!!) and I had to clean that before we left, then she peed in front of the litter box and I had to clean that, then my car wouldn't start, and then I spilled a quarter bottle of water down over me (if you don't think that sounds like much water get a water bottle and dump a quarter of it on you.) We obviously had a late start and didn't finally exit our county until about nine-thirty. We made it to the beach by about two o'clock and met up with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and my nephews.

Things were going well.  We had a great time for the couple hours we spend on the beach until we left the beach to find the rental office.  (We had to go to the rental office  to pick up the key to the house we were staying at for the next few days.)  At this point I have to admit I was on edge; Yes, I was excited because we were on vacation but I had one of my endless migraines as well as a fair amount of abdominal cramping (that I have still been experiencing), I was being hovered by extreme exhaustion (nothing uncommon for me as I'm still struggling with managing my energy levels),plus a tad bit of disappointment that we hadn't reached our destination earlier in the day (allowing us spend more time at the beach), and then the fact that the now we can't find the office and are driving in circles (and we needed to find the office within the next twenty minutes before it closed didn't help either).

Jason and I had a misunderstanding with the directions to the rental office.  I have to admit we were both right and we were both wrong!  It is how men and women look at things differently.  One book I once read described it as the man looks out of blue glasses and the female looks out of pink glasses.  That was exactly how it was! Well lets just say it didn't go well!   He was exhausted and started to get upset with me, I started taking it personally and the conversation it got heated.  I am totally ashamed of how I acted and the words that came out of my mouth that never come out of my mouth.  I actually had to apologize to everyone and to God for my actions because they were unacceptable.

Why am I telling you this?  Because I feel we all go through these days...  The little things can just start adding up in life.  That little piece of gravel or that sharp nail can now become what causes a small wound which in turn can become larger if we are not careful!   Maybe if I would not have been so stubborn & would have been upfront explaining to Jason that I had a migraine& that I was exhausted instead of just putting on my "happy face"pretending all was good all day instead of hiding the fact that I didn't feel well and "sucking it up", and if we both would have been more open to listen to each other the trip to find the rental office wouldn't have turned out as "heated". Maybe it would have, I am not sure?  Like I said we all have those moments, we are all human.  It is how we deal with it once it happens is what matters...

Ephesians 4:26  In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil the foothold.

But IF I would have let that fester & not brought attention to to it, not taken the high road realizing that I was also at fault in the situation, and didn't have to be "always Right Jackie" and apologize; that wound would have gotten larger and what good would that have done? It would not have only impacted me (eventually could have impacting me spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally (obviously)), but it would have impacted my husband, my children, and all of those around me.

Thankfully, we both apologized; traveling (especially the first day) can be very stressful. HA HA

I thank God for an amazing husband and for my wonderful children.

Remember that those tiny pieces of gravel can cause huge wounds!  Don't be stubborn like me and take action, remove the gravel from your shoe. You don't know what your next breath will bring so don't go to bed angry.  Try to figure out what is upsetting you and work on fixing it.