The doctor said “fracture,” but I thought, “It’s just a finger. It won’t be a big deal.”
For a week, I have been wearing a splint and bandages on the middle finger on my right (non-dominant) hand due to an unfortunate accident early last week. It turns out that it is a bigger deal than I expected it to be. I have discovered a number of things that become a lot harder with a broken finger:
- Changing a 14 month old’s clothes
- Changing a 14 month old’s diaper
- Hand washing dishes
- Packaging 40 pounds of chicken for the freezer
- Tying shoes
- Playing piano 🙂
I am allowed to take the splint and bandages off to shower, and now it feels weird to have my finger exposed. It is a pain to wear the splint, it limits and impairs what I can do, but it protects my damaged finger until it heals. When the splint is off, I am nervous that I will accidentally do something to hurt it again…or that one of the kids will. 😉
The past year has been very hard. This broken finger is such a great metaphor for my life right now. I am reeling a bit from this hard year, and I am not sure if I should take off the splint yet. I have wonderful friends, and I am so thankful for their friendship and listening ears through these hard months. I am slowly moving forward, but I feel like life this year and even the past few years has changed me a lot, and I am trying to figure out who I am now.
I am thankful that the God who made me knows me better than I know myself. Romans 8:24-25 says, “…Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
I am hanging on to hope. Some days I would prefer to let go. But I keep hanging on. Are you hanging on, too? Let’s hang together. There is something on the other side of this struggle that will be worth the pain. I long for the day it is revealed.
Angela Gidley 