Being Thankful

I have a bad habit. I pick at my fingernails. Some Freudian types might suggest that it's transferance of the thumb-sucking habit I had to give up when I turned 3 years old. I don't know much about Freud. I just pick at my fingernails. Sometimes I focus on pushing up my cuticles. Sometimes I clean under the nails themselves. Most of the time, I pull at the little tags that form when my cuticles crack. 98% of the time, it's a bad result. I'll start pulling at the dead skin, hoping to separate it cleanly. But 98% of the time, I rip off a substantial chunk of my flesh, resulting in the spurt of fresh blood.

Sunday afternoon, I noticed another little crack in the cuticle on my right middle finger. I was able to resist for a about 20 minutes, but it kept bugging me. So I started to pull. I was smart enough to stop when I first saw the flush of blood. I actually contemplated walking the 12 steps to our bathroom where we keep the nail clipper, but I thought it would be too much work to walk. So I gambled on the 2% chance that it might be a clean separation of the epidermis from the dermal layer. Once again, I was wrong. This particular lesion was quite significant for a cuticle pull. It actually throbbed and I had to stop the flow with a tissue. I was a bit annoyed all afternoon. Function was a bit limited as I was trying to protect the now-exposed dermal layer of my right middle finger.

I was standing there in the bathroom, cleaning up my mortal flesh wound for the second time (I knocked off the plasma crusty layer washing my hands after a particularly productive diaper change) when my dad called on the phone, interrupting my self-pitying moment. He called to tell me that my aunt and uncle, who were visiting for Thanksgiving, had been in a car accident. They had just left my parents' home and were driving on the freeway when another car darted across the lanes of traffic and hit them on the passenger side. Their car flipped several times and landed upright, facing oncoming traffic. My uncle had some lacerations and heavy bruising, but was not in serious condition. My aunt was also in stable condition, but seriously injured her hand. According to my father, her right middle finger had been crushed and essentially filleted. The bone was shattered and her fingernail was gone. It was bad enough that the resident on call at the ER didn't quite know what to do. My dad called to tell me that he and mom were going to take my aunt, who is a nurse, up to her own hospital so she could see a hand specialist.

I felt like such a fool in that moment. Here I was bemoaning a little cuticle pull when at that very same moment my aunt, whose work requires dextrous hands, was facing possible compromise in the use of the very same finger. And I was finally able to look at my little booboo and be thankful that it was so insignificant. It's interesting what a little perspective can do. Hearing of my aunt's injury made me thankful that mine was so....nothing. Yet in her perspective, her serious injury, next to the possibility of lost lives, must also have paled in comparison. I do think much of it is about perspective. I sometimes choose to dwell on the little suffering I have rather than the great suffering that I don't have. And I sometimes forget about the blessings I already have as I think of the other blessings I want. So now I want to choose to do more than just give thanks on occasion. I want to choose to be thankful always.

Clarice

PS Please pray for my aunt's recovery. She had surgery Tuesday morning.