The Sliver of Hope

Speaking of slivers, I'm kind of a baby when it comes to foreign objects lodged in the epidermis. As I was doing some home repairs a few months ago (which I am hopefully inept at), I happened to be filing down some metal and pushed a curled piece of aluminum under my fingernail. It hurt, yes, but I treated the episode as if I'd received a mortal wound. Not knowing the exact procedure for a wound of this sort, I lifted my hand high above my head and began to run around the house looking for the tweezers. I'm not sure why I lifted my hand above my head, but certainly if you lift something high enough eventually the pain will cease, right? So, with my left hand I rummaged through our bathroom drawer and located the floral bag that contains all the instruments of torture for removing a splinter. Of course there is a tweezers and some kind of cream that is supposed to suck out all of the infecting germs. Then there is the 'probe.' It's a nice name for a very sharp object that is meant to dig out a splinter underneath the surface of the skin. It is truly medieval just looking at it.

As an aside, did you know that in Rudesheim/Rhein, Germany, you can spend 25 Euros to view the instruments of torture from the middle ages? You can come to my house and I'll charge you nothing to see our splinter removing bag.

After finding the bag, I took it to Christine holding it in front of me as if it were a dirty diaper. "What's wrong with you?" she asked. "And why are you holding your hand above your head like that?"
Scrunching up my face in agony I responded, "Splinter." I was breathless. "I've got a monster metal shaving shoved all the way to my cuticle. I hope we don't have to go to the hospital. I don't want this thing amputated." I made that up, but worst case scenario always crosses one's mind.

Christine stood up and held out her hands, grabbed the bag and then pulled my hand down from the sky. "Let me look at it." Even as she touched the digit, I felt pain shooting down my arm. I don't know if it was from the splinter or just from having it over my head for so long. "Relax," she said in this condescending way - I already knew what she was thinking - Big Baby. "Easy," I said holding on to the painful arm with my good hand. "How does it look? Can you get to it?"

Christine didn't even look me in the eyes. "Hmmm."
"What does that mean, hmmm? Is it going to take surgery?"
Finally, she looked up at me. "It's in a little ways. I think the probe should do the trick."

The probe. The probe. Anything but the probe.

"Take a few deep breaths. This might hurt a bit." I began the sure process of hyperventilation. I retracted my hand from her and said, "I don't think I want to do this. Eventually it will get pushed out, won't it?"

"Yes, eventually, I suppose," Christine said, "But do you want to be in your agony-like state for a while, or get it over with. If we get it out, then you won't have to bother with worrying about infection. Give me your hand. Let's do this thing."

Christine really is a good nurse, although at this point, I wasn't quite sure about her bedside manner. She was hurting my pride as much as my finger. Which hurts more, bruised pride or slivered finger? I tentatively gave my hand back to her and the silver of the probe flashed in the sunlight. It looked like a surgeon's scalpel in a slasher movie. Then, it happened. She grabbed the finger and squeezed. "For goodness sake," I said, "Give me a wooden spoon to bite down on - or at least your miniature plastic whisk!"

"Hold still," she said while holding on to my finger like a bull rider on top of the wild toro.
"Why do you have to pinch it? Can't you just tweeze it out?"
"If I don't pinch your finger," she said, "The sliver will stay in. Like I said, it's going to hurt but when it comes out, you'll feel so much better."

Unfortunately, she was right and after the sliver was extricated, and my wounded digit appropriately creamed and wrapped, my pride bruised but healing, I thanked her and hoped that it wouldn't happen again. But, slivers are unavoidable obstacles of life. If you aren't getting any slivers that you aren't working at the beautiful, difficult things in human existence.

Working out slivers in relationships is just as touchy. Most people who are wounded are very careful about holding back the injury from healing. Because of careless words or actions, the injury is often unnoticed and we back away from healing because the healing process is usually quite painful. Many people don't want to talk about the feelings of injury for fear of offending more or the words they use will be misconstrued. People want to be 'nice' more than they want to be 'healthy.'

I asked a young man who was having problems with his brother if he had worked to resolve the feelings with his brother. He shook his head and said, "Are you kidding? If I let him know that he hurt me, something so trivial, he'll look at that as weakness and roll his eyes. I can't appear weak in front of him."

"So, how are you going to handle it?" I asked.

"I'm going to avoid him until I feel better about what happened."

"And when will that be? Will you just forget about it or let it fester until the next time he says something and then you get really mad?"

The young man looked up at me, "Thanks for the encouragement, Pastor."

"I am encouraging you. Encouraging you to build a relationship of trust and communication. If he isn't aware that you are hurt, whether intentional or unintentional, how will you expect to have a relationship with him. If you simply avoid him, you are taking the easy way out. You're doing what we call - self preservation. If humans are good at anything, they are good at avoiding pain."

"But what if it hurts? What if, after we're done talking, he doesn't want to see me again?"

"That's always the fear of the unknown - the 'what if'. But, if you can sit down and talk with him and tell him how you feel, not just rehash the events that triggered the hurt feelings, I believe that you'll get through this."

Truly, one of the most difficult parts of managing conflict, is to get beyond the event and deal with the feelings involved. The event is the visible part of the sliver - like the tip of the iceberg - that can be seen and you attempt to get a hold of it and pull it out, but the deeper, more painful part of the sliver are the feelings that are very close to the nerves. Care must be taken, but working in the midst of pain is the only way to extricate the sliver - to get rid of the that which is causing the pain. The root of the problem, if you will.

So, how is this done? Sometimes the two people can come together. If they are family members, one bold person asks the other one to talk (and listen). Sometimes the fear of confrontation takes over and the injured one tries to resolve the conflict outside of the two parties involved. This triangulation often will confuse the third part of the triangle and the injured one will attempt to 'persuade' the new member of the triangle to his or her perspective. Generally, triangulation is a difficult thing. Triangulation leads not only to misplaced feelings but the beginnings of gossip and as soon as gossip starts, the event is broadcast and there is no return from that excursion.

The bible gives us a few possible solutions. If, at first, the attempt to reason with your fellow family member alone does not work, then take someone trusted with you to the meeting. It is usually best not to take someone with a personal stake because it then feels like there is a ganging up. Perhaps someone not quite so close to the situation would be better - a mediator. This person is there simply to moderate discussion so that it does not become a personal attack, but a sorting out of feelings from a specific event. Have each person share how the event made them feel rather than how the other person screwed up. Start statements with, "I feel _______ when this happens." Talk about the root of the problem rather than the visible manifestation. This is not simply psycho-babble but an important tool for all family members to take hold of. Simply another tool in the tool box to promote healthy family dynamics.

It is not easy. It probably will hurt a little bit. But if done correctly, the brief amount of pain will bring forth growth and allow the pair to avoid situations where similar slivers might occur. To watch what one says - and, to watch how one says it. It's 5% what you say and 95% how you say it.

So, no that I've taken the scenic route to this blog, are there any slivers in your life that are coming to a head? Any moments for extraction? Any infections causing a great amount of pain? Can you find a way to head them off?

A sliver

It's Holy Week - they all seem holy at some point or another, but this week is all about passion. Passion of the Christ. I watched Mel Gibson's rendition (re-enactment if you will), the glorifying gore fest of Hollywood weds strange biblical interpretion. I think more people talked about how gruesome the movie was than the actual content of the biblical narrative. Hollywood focuses on action rather than on dialogue, on blood rather than experience. I found myself cringing to watch the lengthy scenes of torture - not because it bothered me emotionally, but that I was thinking about the thousands of people who were going to watch this film because Mel Gibson's name was on it. He's come a long ways from Lethal Weapon, don't you think?



Western media has a fascination with gore. Our movies, newspapers, magazines, TV shows are awash with the ways that the human body can be hurt. Although most young people (and I included, at times) are immune or numbed to the display of blood, there are still moments when I have to avert my eyes. One such time that I did recently was while watching the TV show Survivor. I have to admit that I am a Survivor fan - I even tried out for the show a few years ago (I can't imagine why they didn't accept me - there must not be many Lutherans on the selection committee. If there were, I probably would have been sent to a subcommittee who would have passed me off to a task team of the subset of a committee. Anyway, I'm digressing farther and farther into the realm of losing even myself.) So, I was watching Survivor and one of my favorite players of all time, James, was enjoying one of the challenges. As he was running through a maze or something, he cut his finger a bit. James, an undertaker by profession, seemed to brush off the injury and proceed playing the game.

After a few days, the small cut on his finger, because it was not properly treated, became infected. The knuckle and surrounding skin began to swell. His pain was evident, but there was not possibility to take care of it without surrending his position in the game. Finally, a medic came to evaluate his injury and she, without hesitation, told him his options. He could continue playing the game and risk not only losing his finger but gathering a life-threatening blood infection - or leave the game and treat the finger. Wisely, James chose the latter, but I was frustrated. How could something so little take out the strongest player. I was imagining that if James would be taken from the game it would be for breaking a bicep or something. Not something little like that.

Maybe all of us have had something like that happen in our lives. Running your hand down a bannister or across a bare wooden wall - a sliver, finds its way under the skin. Sometimes I don't even notice it - not until it begins to hurt. Sometimes I assume that my body will simply just absorb the sliver, digest it and I will be none for the worse. I don't remove it right away, usually, because excising the sliver is almost more painful than the sliver itself - at first, that is. But gradually, the body knows that this intrusive substance will only cause sickness and pain and if left long enough, the poison seeps into the veins and heart; then, risk death.

All from a little sliver.

All from a little word. One word thrown casually gets under the skin of someone else. Or, a rumor that is just too juicy to pass by. Maybe a person who doesn't share the same ideologies, I just want to offer them a little barb - maybe a small, sarcastic remark. And there it is, that sliver of a painful word is lodged under the skin. It festers and soon the poison might seep in. Then, a word thrown back.

We as Christians - we as people - need to remember that we, together, are the body of Christ. What affects someone else, affects me also. When another member of the body is injured, in pain, or hurting, I am not immune to that. We can either treat the injury, even though the surgery process may be painful, or we can let it infect the whole body and the whole body will become ill. Churches are notorious for letting this happen. In the name of being 'nice' we try and let different words slide, but too often they become lodged too close to the pain receptors and soon we are passing on slivers to others in the church. That poison is what kills individual congregations.

When Jesus said, "Do to others as you would have them do to you," I think he truly meant, "When you do something to others you ARE doing it to yourself." We are intricately connected. We cannot separate ourselves.

Next week (it will only be one week, hopefully) let's discuss how to effectively treat the effects of infection in the body of Christ. How do we, as Christians, speak honestly and openly about things that may be hurtful?

That should be a fun sliver!