 |
Category: Life
This blog was originally posted in July 2007.
He was lost. Beyond lost. He didn't even know where to begin to try to find his way out of this mess. But up ahead, he saw hope:
On the front porch of this old gas station sat four old men. The traveler pulled in and got out of his car. These men would help him find his way.
"You lost?" one of the men asked as he approached.
"I'm trying to get to the highway."
"Oh. You're way off track."
One of the men began giving directions and our young traveler tried to listen. But a sound distracted him. A barely perceptible high-pitched noise. He looked around and saw a sad dog lying next to one of the men.
"Here buddy," the traveler said and the dog rose and laboriously made his way over to him. As he petted the animal, he noticed the dog no longer whimpered. Eventually the dog grew bored with the stranger's gentle touch and returned to his original spot. After walking in circles for a half a minute or so, he plopped down in the exact same place he'd occupied before. And promptly resumed whimpering.
Finally, the traveler had to know. "What's the matter with your dog?" he asked the man who was sitting in the rocker closest to the dog.
The man looked down as if just noticing the dog for the first time. "Oh, that's Buster. He's lying on an old rusty nail."
The man was confused. If the dog was in pain, why did he continue to stay on the nail? And why had he gotten up, only to return to the same spot which was hurting him?
"Why doesn't he move?" the traveler finally asked the old guy.
The old guy shrugged. "Guess it doesn't hurt bad enough yet."
Someone told me this old story last year, when I was going through a difficult time. I heard her message loud and clear but I still chose to stay in my situation. I stayed until I could take no more. But it was long past the point when the whimpering had begun. Long past knowing that even though I hated to lose someone that meant that much to me, it was better to cut ties than to keep hurting. But I chose to keep hurting...
Just how badly does it have to hurt before you finally get off that old rusty nail?
3:37 PM
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|