The Splinter

A few days ago, I was in a room in our house that I rarely go into. I was busy with something near the door when suddenly a tiny splinter got stuck deep inside my index finger, right under the nail. The pain was sharp and unexpected and it lasted only a second but it was enough to make me stop and look at my finger.

I knew I should probably remove it right away, but I was in the middle of something and didn’t want to stop. So I told myself I’d take care of it once I was done. The thing is, the splinter wasn’t hurting all the time. Most of the day I could ignore it and every now and then, though, it would brush against something and remind me that it was still there. Each time, I would think about removing it, but then I’d tell myself, “Let me just finish this one thing first” and that went on for the entire day.

By the time night came, I finally sat down to remove it. As I looked at my finger, I realized that the reason I had been postponing it wasn’t because I didn’t have a few minutes. The real reason was that I still remembered the pain of that first moment when it went in. Somewhere in my mind, I had connected dealing with the splinter with pain, so avoiding it felt easier.

But after spending the whole day there, the splinter had settled deeper. When I finally removed it, it hurt more than it would have if I had taken care of it in the morning. The relief came immediately, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how different the day could have been if I had simply dealt with it when it first happened.

Later, I realized that we do this with much bigger things in life.

Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding with a friend that we keep postponing a conversation about. Sometimes it’s a relationship that needs honesty. Sometimes it’s an old wound, an old fear, or something from our past that we know we need to work through. We keep telling ourselves we’ll deal with it later. After work gets less busy. After life settles down. After we feel more ready.

But while we’re waiting, the issue doesn’t disappear. It stays where it is, quietly sitting beneath the surface. And often, the longer we leave it there, the deeper it settles.

Facing those things isn’t easy. Difficult conversations can hurt. Healing old wounds can hurt. Looking honestly at ourselves can hurt. But avoiding them doesn’t make them go away.

That tiny splinter reminded me that some pain is part of healing. And sometimes the relief we’re looking for doesn’t come from waiting longer. It comes from finally dealing with the thing we’ve been postponing all along.

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