Sunday, September 19, 2010

The 'Tick' Story.

Once again, I apologise for not updating my blog as often as I’d like. I wish I could say that I was busy (which I was but that’s not the only reason) but truth be told, I didn’t have much inspiration to write anything. Haha! The lack of impetus due to the lack of English lessons has gotten to me. But now I have too much to share. I’ll take it slow then.

It’s a Sunday morning and my brother and I spent it attacking my dog and searching for ticks in her. She has a MASSIVE amount of them! It accumulated because *ahem* I haven’t been bathing her often. But as we were performing this ‘minor surgical procedure’ requiring the skilled hands of the surgeon (my brother) and an anaesthetic (me holding Melody still while blowing into her face), something struck me.

How many of us have ‘ticks’ on us? Parasites that we have allowed into our lives to drain us of the time, energy, even money on things which aren’t important?

I know I have. Far too many actually.

For too long I’ve let them take root in my life when I should have taken them out a long time ago. The problem is ticks hate it when you try to take them out. ESPECIALLY when they’ve engorged themselves silly on my poor dog. You pull them out and they scamper all around the dog and squishing them is pretty disgusting too. Sometimes it’s easier to leave them in because after awhile, you cease to notice them as parasites but just assume they’re part of your life, ‘For better or for worse’.

In that sense, taking out the ‘ticks’ in our life is never easy. It’s painful. (My poor dog yelped when we pulled them out). It requires the strength of the will and the courage of the heart. Strength of the will not only to recognise the ‘ticks’ but to decide and carry out its removal. Courage of the heart to then stand firm on the decision.

The worse part of ticks is if you don’t fully remove them, the head still remains in the wound and the dog will have a bad infection. Which is why my brother and I keep squinting at the ticks we removed to make sure the head is out as well.

I guess that is true in the sense of our parasites too. Sometimes my courage falters and I didn’t remove the ‘tick’ fully. Sadly, I end up making mistakes far worse than before.

What are the ‘ticks’ in your life? Most of the time, we already know what they are but for some reason or another, we want to keep them in. For me, if there’s one thing I learnt about these pests, it is sometimes it’s good to turn around and go back to the beginning when you’re hopelessly lost trying to move forward. When too many doors have closed, when it becomes too difficult, it could be God trying to tell you that, ‘Hey, it’s time to let go’.

And so I will let go of these ‘ticks’. Painful as it is, sometimes the best place to be is right at the beginning again to start over.