By Elizabeth Brown

 

Growing up, there was a pain that I would periodically encounter that now seems to have a sort of relevance to my spiritual life.

 

At my childhood home, we had a deck made of wood that housed a table, chairs, a grill, and I’m sure an array of other common outdoor things. Once in a while, I would get a splinter in my hand from the deck. And despite the fact that having a splinter in your skin is painful in and of itself, that is not the part I recall as producing the most suffering.

 

It was the removal of the splinter.

 

Once it was discovered the piece of sharp wood had burrowed until my skin, my dad would take tweezers and pry the splinter out. Usually, it would involve me crying. It wasn’t fun. I would resist the poking and squeezing of the process. But once it was out, I was all better again and it would leave my mind, until next time. Naturally, you can’t go around leaving a splinter in your body. It doesn’t belong there and it hurts and can cause more problems in the long run.

 

And isn’t that much like our attachments?

 

Through God’s grace I have come to a much clearer understanding of my loathsome attachment to control, although I’m sure I am still blind in many respects to my defects. This need for control over outcomes, over optics (no doubt rooted in vanity and pride), has been stuck under my skin for a while. And in the past few months as I face what seems to be one thing after another, it has become painfully apparent just how much of a servant I am to the attachment to control.

 

But here’s the thing. The attachment, although I’m sure exists out of fear in order to try and mitigate current or future suffering, only ever causes me pain and sorrow. Sure, it might externally help with things going smoothly. But as for my interior life, it is a tremendous burden. It is a splinter.

 

I have been praying every day for months, asking God to remove attachments and defects from my soul. It seems my Heavenly Father heard me and took out the tweezers. It hurts. It’s rough. Whether it is active or passive purgation, this is not a pleasant process.

 

However, it is necessary, as I mentioned that the attachment actually isn’t helping me at all. It makes me miserable. And until I learn to detach, release the need to control, and fully trust God, it is going to keep on stabbing me and plunging me into despair when things don’t go my way.

 

Now, I am actively in this process, so unfortunately I have little if any consolation to offer. But I will say this: no matter how painful or difficult the pruning is, do not stop praying. Do not turn from God. Run to Him. Tell Him it hurts, but you trust in Him and that it is for the benefit of your soul. Seek His comfort. Even when I feel utterly downcast, my soul still finds relief after I have spent time with Him.

 

Ultimately, abandoning our attachments will set us free. We just have to be willing to let God tweeze them out of us.