vusi's splinter.

the other day I priced tweezers. I don’t remember buying a pair before, and was astounded to see they can be as expensive as a night at the movies! $20.00 for a metal thing that removes small things in our skin?
so I settled for the cheap pair. However, I went out on a limb and did something crazy—I bought the kind that are pointed at the ends like pencils. I rarely buy things that don’t seem practical to me, especially when I am broke. But the package convinced me that I needed these sort of tweezers because they claimed they could pull out even invisible hairs from your eyebrows. Wow. I wondered if they could pull other invisible things out of my life: like bad habits and character traits that annoy people around me but I’m completely unaware of. I figured tweezers weren’t going to solve all my problems, but for $4 I confidently left with my razor-sharp pair.
I regretted my decision almost immediately. Rather than pulling hairs out, I found they were so pointed that they almost seemed to cut the hair at the root when I grabbed it with them. So it never successfully pulled the hair out, it just trimmed it. Great. Now I would have to buy another pair of tweezers to do what these were supposed to do, but didn’t. I threw them in my make-up bag and managed to use other people’s tweezers when I needed a hair pulled.
But the other day, my razor-sharp tweezers redeemed themselves! While staying with a friend and her two kids, one day we discovered that the older boy had a splinter in his hand. Splinters freak me out when I see them in the skin of kids. I am most definitely not made to be a nurse or anyone who has to deal with these sorts of things. Maybe this disqualifies me from being mother-material. Cutting kids nails also makes me nervous in this way, but my friend told me she cuts her baby’s nails too short everytime and I felt better. She seems like a great mom to me, and if she wasn’t able to cut nails without causing pain then I figured some things are just born to be difficult. Same with removing splinters.
So, I took Vusi’s sweet little hand and sure enough, he had a splinter that had caused a small infection in his hand. I sat there in silence, fearing I would have to be the one to remove the splinter since she had a baby in her arms. I was imagining myself with a sewing needle, pulling away skin and digging a small hole around the splinter. That’s how my parents got them out. I didn’t know another way. Amy said, “I think steven took my tweezers” (her husband, who was out of town) and WHALAH: I thought of my new, previously useless tweezers! I jumped up and got them, hoping they would get the splinter out but not sure how tweezers got out splinters…I had just never seen it done. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
I took vusi’s hand again and began to pry around the infected area with the point of the tweezers. He jerked his hand away twice but didn’t make a noise, so I kept going back to try again. I could tell I was going to get this thing out, and I was into it. I learned that by pushing up under the buried end of the splinter, it seemed to be slowly pushing the thing out of his skin. I did this a few times, and suddenly the splinter went shooting out of his skin. It was glorious! I seriously had anticipated causing major pain for this kid, having to tie him up while I dug this piece of wood out of his tender little palm. But no, it came out so easily. And after it came a little blob of puss. I pushed a bit more and cleared it of all sign of infection. I told vusi how proud of was of him for being a big boy, but under my breath I’m telling myself the same sort of affirmation.
What’s the point of this story, you ask? It has one. Because the splinter had been in his hand overnight, the body had begun it’s own process of removing the splinter by creating an infected area that would begin to push the particle out with time. Our bodies have a way of removing their own splinters. We don’t need tweezers. A few days later I thought back on this experience and it really related to life for me. in life, we all have splinters in our heart and soul, places where we have been hurt in one way or another and an infection is growing. Just as the body is naturally made my God to heal, so is the soul. The infection makes us aware of a problem, cause sometimes the splinter is so tiny you don’t’ know it’s there until it hurts. Likewise, sometimes we have pains in our heart that we don’t notice for a long time, but if we are in touch with ourselves even a little bit, we will eventually become aware of the issue. And if we are willing, the issue can be removed with a bit of effort on our part.
I started thinking about people in my life who I know are really struggling with splinters they don’t even acknowledge. But just a little push here and push there, and the issue comes to the surface and healing can fully come.