There was once a time in my life when I was a stickler about not leaving dirty dishes in the sink ... not so much now, but there was a time when it was a rarity for me to go to bed without every dish washed and put neatly away. In fact, I was almost a freak about it ... envisioning the unclean dishes growing germs in the night that could infest my house and my family while we slept. And in addition to the whole germ phobia, there was the plain old simple grossness of dishes with remnants of food in them lying in wait for me to awaken in the morning, with the once edible morsels growing stale and hard and crusty. Such was the case one night when we had spaghetti for dinner ... a fateful night that led to a fateful morning ... a morning I will never forget.
It was when we lived in Florida, and after our dinner of spaghetti, a friend, whose husband was out of town on business just as mine was, called and suggested we take our children to the beach to watch the sun as it set across the water. It was a beautiful evening, so I quickly agreed to my friend's suggested excursion. I put our dishes in the sink, ran some water over them, loaded the kids in the van and headed to my friend's house to get her and her two children. All of the kids had a great time ... playing in the sand and collecting shells (it was always interesting to me that no matter how many times we went to the beach each week, my kids always came home with more shells), and my friend and I enjoyed having some grown-up conversation. It was almost 9 p.m. when we left the beach, and we decided to stop for ice cream on the way home, which caused me to carry a sleeping Meghann and then Brad and then Matt into our house when we got back. After settling my children into their beds, I looked at the dishes in the sink and decided I was too tired to wash them and would do it first thing in the morning. I ran some more water over them and went to bed. I must have been really tired, because I actually slept in the next morning ... I didn't wake up until Matt came and jumped in bed with me, saying that he was ready for breakfast. By the time I cooked oatmeal and made toast, Brad and Meghann were awake as well and we all had breakfast together outside on the patio.
As the kids played outside in the back yard, I began to rinse the dishes and load them into the dishwasher. The breakfast dishes were easy to clean, and I was on the last of the leftover spaghetti bowls from the night before ... they were taking more effort because the pieces of spaghetti that had managed to avoid my casual watering from the night before required a great deal of scraping to remove them from the sides of the bowls. As I said, I was on the last bowl ... and that's when it happened. I was scraping the hardened spaghetti from the bowl, and a small piece broke away from the dish and went under my fingernail ... yes, you read it correctly, a piece of hard noodle went under my nail ... and honestly, I had never felt pain that intense. My initial reaction was to stick my finger under some cold water, which was really smart because it made the spaghetti soften and expand which in turn ramped up the pain level about a bazillion notches. I'll spare you the details, but I eventually had to call a friend and ask her to drive me to the doctor. The doctor removed my nail to get the spaghetti out ... I was bandaged up to my elbow and couldn't lower my hand for two weeks or the pain would cause me to faint, and it was several months before my finger fully healed. Fun times with three little kids to take care of and a husband who traveled most of the week ... fun times indeed.
I remember thinking at the time how stupid I had been ... I remember chastising myself again and again for not washing the dishes the night before ... I remember wondering how something so small and insignificant as a piece of spaghetti could have wreaked such havoc in my life. I'm not completely certain why the spaghetti incident has been on my mind again lately, but I'm thinking it's because God has a lesson in it for me. You see, it's often the small things in life that can hurt the most ... little things that pierce my heart and make me writhe in pain ... small things that if I don't get them removed will continue to hurt, will expand and grow, and will eventually threaten my very existence. Just like the spaghetti getting under my nail in the blink of an eye, those little things can slip into my heart before I even realize what has happened and do some big damage. Those little things can tarnish my testimony; they can lead me into sin; they can even cause me to doubt my faith. It was very painful to have my nail removed, but that was the only way ... it hurts to the core of my being when God peels away parts of my heart, but it's the only way. He knows every little piece of spaghetti that is stuck in my heart ... He knows.
"Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psalm 139:23-24
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