Board-walking?

Favoring my freshly injured right knee, I slid barefoot across my weathered wood deck. Not good. Now I have a shard of pine the size of Rhode Island imbedded in the ball of my left foot. My husband tried diligently to turn his piano hands into a Florence Nightingale on-site surgery procedure but it was too painful. So I'm relegated to a blob of antibiotic cream wrapped in a bandaid, hoping the sliver area will soften and the splinter will either come out on it's own or be easier to tweeze out later.. Ugh.

How can something so small and insignificant totally dictate how you walk, how you feel, how you view where you step, and just about everything else "how"? I think I know this. I think I've been here before. Caution: Watch your step.

• Wear shoes. And when you don't know "where" shoes, don't walk barefoot.
• Go on missions trips. 'Cause if you go on missions trips, you're up to date on your tetanus immunizations, so when you are an idiot on the home-front, you'll be covered.
• Be thankful you have someone who careth. But be willing to standeth there and listeneth while they chideth, "What were you thinking, sliding across the deck in your bare-feet?" (Be grateful for this extreme care and concern.)
• This splinter will keep you from being excessively exalted, according to 2 Corinthians 12:7 -"And to keep me from being puffed up and too much elated by the exceeding greatness (preeminence) of these revelations, there was given me a thorn (a splinter) in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to rack and buffet and harass me, to keep me from being excessively exalted."
• When it's removed, don't congratulate yourself. Just never forget.

This little episode no where near compares with those who have suffered greatly for the cause of Christ. This is just a splinter in my foot, for cryin' out loud. But I do know this: It's easy to complain and whine about my neighbor's stumbling spec of lumber when I have an embedded telephone poll or redwood fragment in my own flesh (or eye). The difference this time though - it's in my foot and not in my eye. I not only see it, I feel it - with every step.

My heart will benefit from the shard of truth in my foot. It reminds me to run and stay very far away from the "path of puffed up-ness"...especially in my bare feet.