Hardware removal

December 5th 2008

Last week I was in the hospital for one day having “hardware removal”.  Sounds strange until you know my medical history, including the fact that I have titanium pins and screws in my head.  One of these pins and two screws were removed because they were coming loose.  This was causing pain of course, and they were removed with the hope that the pain across the right side of my head would go away.  I won’t know the outcome of this until the staples are removed.

It is interesting, when we are in pain, what we are willing to go through to have it go away. At times the means of getting rid of the initial pain are worse then the inital pain itself.  Going in the operating room, and walking around with staples in my head is not easy task, however in the end it should be worth it if the pain caused by the loose screw goes away!

With God there have been times in my life when He was trying to strip something from my life because it didn’t reflect Him that seemed terribly painful at the time, but in the end turned out to be well worth the result!  These can be superficial things, emotional attachments, all sorts of things.  One thing that he had to take from me to bring me to where I am today was the pride I held in the accomplishments in my career.  My job was a trophy to me.  The job itself was not the issue, it was the status I placed on it, the position I gave it in my life.  God tells us to put nothing before Him.  I was doing that.  I was finding my joy in something other then Him.  I could not do that on a long term basis and continue running the race He laid out for me without crumbling.

Having God place me on His anvil and strip that pride from my heart was painful.  I did not want to admit it, to show God that I was wrong, to admit that though I knew I was suppose to put Him first I was not always doing that.  In the end when I finally did, something amazing happened.  I began to find a joy that could only come from having a solid relationship with Chirst that was consistent, and from having put Him first always.  It is not an easy task to have Chirst mold us on His Anvil sometimes.  The Anvil has been painful at times, especially when God has reached into the depths of who I have identified myself as.  However, the results have always been well worth it!