If you don’t know this about me already, you must know that I am always looking at what the metaphor for life might be that God wants to teach me.

The graphic above is a photo of the piece of glass that lodged downward into my left hand last Thursday. I was trying to get the topper off of my Christmas tree—standing on a stool—when I heard my freezing dog barking out in the yard. I knew I needed to get her back in, so I quickly jumped down. Unfortunately, I turned my ankle—dropping and breaking the glass topper where my hand also landed as it braced my fall. I saw a gash and knew I needed to do something quick!

So what did I do?

I did what most moms would do . . . I cleaned it, sealed up the bleeding with some super glue, then wrapped a gauze bandage around my hand so that I could finish my job.

All day Friday it kept bothering me. So I would scrape off the super glue and try poking around in there with a sterilized needle. I just couldn’t tell if anything was still in there, though. So I would bandage it up again and go on with life.

On Saturday morning I decided to ask an expert, so I called to ask a nurse friend of mine what her opinion was. She told me to spray peroxide and sterile water into the wound to force any foreign objects out.

After I did this, I rigged a magnifying glass up and took another probing look at it. It seemed like there was something I hadn’t noticed before. So I sterilized my needle {again} and, to my surprise, I felt like something hard was in there! But I couldn’t get it out with the needle, so I sterilized some tweezers to extract it and “lo and behold” I was able to pull out the lovely shard pictured above!

Here’s where the metaphor for marriage and life comes in . . .

First of all, I knew something wasn’t right about that spot. My hand was trying to get my attention by pushing that object/problem to the surface. Very often we don’t like the way a problem in our circumstances or in our spouse’s attitude continues to grab our attention—often discouraging us.

But what if God was using those issues to get our attention to do something proactive like “pulling a shard of glass out of our hand” . . . Or facing a hard conversation in marriage, or “eating some humble pie” by apologizing to our mate, etc.?

What if we just continued to ignore it? <Shudder!>

Second of all, I feel like God was very intimately involved with the piercing of this piece of glass.

Think about it . . .

God made sure that those bits of glass fell in just the right formation so that I did not have other cuts and so that the piece that did cut me went in “parallel” instead of horizontally—where it could have cut precious ligaments and tendons. I have no issues with bending or using my fingers—for which I’m very grateful because of how much I use them here and in my job.

I’m so grateful that God watched over me even in what seemed like a chaotic moment.

In the same way, [Tweet “God is orchestrating events and circumstances to bring about the best result for you, my friends! “]

It may not be “pain-less” but it is His perfect will that will result in completing that “good work” He began in you and your spouse.

Ultimately, you have a choice. You can ignore it or you can explore it with the help of the Lord guiding your steps toward growth and healing.

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 1:6

What situation or conflict are you trying to ignore or let fester and how’s that workin’ for ya?

What steps do you think you need to take to address the conflict proactively?

If you’re interested, let me know how I can pray for you and I promise to do just that, my friend!

Joining with my friends at Works for Me Wednesday, Wifey Wednesday, Coffee and Conversation, Wholehearted Wednesday, Whimsical Wednesday, and Simply Said Mom.

Now it’s time for Wedded Wednesday …

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