Easy=Dead

My family and I went to Dinosaur Valley yesterday. It's a TX state park just over an hour south of Fort Worth. While we were hiking through the rain (it was truly an awesome day!), Aydan asked me to pick up a huge rock in the stream bed. In my trying to do so, I ripped back my pinky fingernail and caked mud and algae underneath it.

My thought had been to leave the nail as-is. I saw no way to get under it without causing more pain, and I figured it would all work out. This morning my whole finger was swollen and puss way oozing out from under my nail.

So I pulled out the clippers and the tweezers, and I cut my nail down to the stub. I cleaned out the "debris," and wrapped my finger in ointment and bandages.

Now, this brought mild pain to an already hurting finger. It did not feel good to jam the clippers into that raw flesh, but I began to see the alternatives. If the finger did heal on its own, it would have taken much longer with much greater and lasting pain. Or I could produce an infection and require a trip to the doctor. Despite the fact that I did not want to perform surgery on myself, it turned out to be the best of all options.

My uncle Jim and I used to talk about Marine life (bayonettes, not barnicles). I read an article one week about a Marine who chose to take a less obstructed road route during a training exercise, rather than crawl through the mud. He was "killed" almost instantly. His point: easy equals dead. Jim confirmed this through his story of "diddly-boppers" in Vietnam. The guys who came in and bopped around, never vigilant, were always quick to die.

Heather and I have talked about this recently and confirmed its truth. I've been telling my art students recently that nothing valuable comes easily. If you have felt recently that life is hard, be encouraged: if it were easy, it would be death.