INFLAMMATION

We know better than to pick at that scab, but here we are poking at it, worrying it into an oozing wound.  

Or we’ll reach for a switch - a switch as in a stick the width of our thumb and as pliable as a whip, to lash ourselves with.  (It’s the same switch that husbands were permitted to beat their wives with, back in the day.  The ‘rule of thumb,’ was a sanctioned method of torture.)

The metaphor doesn’t matter.

The trigger that tips us from poking to picking doesn’t matter either.  It could have been the dark and stormy day or a fight with the kids, or the burning of our toast this morning.

The scab and the switch are our insecurities.  They lie dormant until we turn our attention to them. But if we don’t catch ourselves in time, we will pick and prod our insecurities into a roaring inflammation, an infection, or worse, gangrene.  And this matters.  It matters because we are raising welts on our souls.  

The truth is that we will never be rid of our insecurities, they are part of what makes us uniquely us.  However, inflaming our insecurities is damaging. 

In fact, any kind of pain inflicted by an outside source PALES in comparison to the breadth and depth of the damage that we can inflict on ourselves by simply continuing to pick at that scab or reach for that switch.  

When we can feel our insecurities rising, rather than poking at that scab or eyeing that switch, STOP.  Show some compassion.  More than at any other time, when we’re feeling vulnerable and our insecurities are threatening to burn out of control, we need to be kinder to ourselves. 

We need not surrender to the perverse voice in our head who wants to see a bonfire.