If You Are Not Getting Stronger...

This was quite an eventful week! A nurse comes once a week to change the dressing around my picc line. Basically it is just changing this plastic piece that holds the picc line to my arm, a small round foam piece called a bio patch that is supposed to keep out infection and then all of this is covered with a large piece of clear tape. When it gets changed the nurse wears sterile gloves and a mask in order to keep as many of the germs out as possible. Unfortunately something funky happened last week and it appeared to be infected. To make a long story short I had to be admitted into the hospital so they could remove the old line, give me a regular IV and then put another picc line in after a couple of days. I went in Wednesday night and got out Saturday afternoon. Since they had taken the old picc line out I noticed the site had been a bit painful and overly sensitive. As I was thinking about it tonight it made me think about why it is so painful!

The tape protects my arm and the site from the ailments. It protects it from infection. I have had it on for almost three months now and it has been protecting my skin. Unfortunately just as in life, our skin wasn't made to be protected like that. It was meant to do the protecting. So when you have tape on it consecutively for that long, when you take it off for good, the skin is extremely sensitive, a bit red and weak. While they are protecting the skin they are also making it weaker. Our skin was meant to me roughed around, bumped, pinched, rubbed and used. It makes it stronger the more you use it. Just look at calluses...they are super hard! Haha ok so our skin doesn't need to be that hard everywhere but we keep our skin in good working condition when we use it. By my skin being covered for three months it has become weaker and will take time again for it to be like the rest of my skin. By protecting it they were also making it weaker.

In life we have to go through hard times. I'm not talking about major trials all the time but the little day to day things that make us stronger. Most of the time we don't realize that we are getting stronger but the fact is, if you are not getting stronger than you are getting weaker. I heard an analogy one day that has helped me understand this better. Life is like walking up an escalator going the wrong way. You are walking up while the stairs are going down. We have to keep walking just to stay where we are. But what happens when we stop? We start to go back down to the bottom. If we don't constantly do the things we know we are supposed to, the simplest yet sometimes the most difficult, like praying and reading our scriptures, it will be so easy for us to fall behind and go down a few feet on the escalator of life.

One can also use the analogy of a train. The train of life is constantly moving. If we choose to step off for a bit, maybe by not going to church or not being obedient to commandments, the train doesn't stop. It keeps going without us. It is our responsibility to not let fear, pain or distractions make us want to stop on the escalator, or jump off the train for a time. The pain, the difficulties, the little struggles in life are there to help us. If we take those away we can't grow. If we are sheltered from hardships we will actually become weaker. So the next time we (I am really speaking to myself here) are facing something that we don't want to...just remember my arm and how three months from now you will wish that you had just kept pushing forward rather than putting tape over the skin, or stopping on the escalator, or jumping off the train. If we are not getting strong we are getting weaker.

If you feel that you have jumped off the train for a bit and you are ready to get back on then please don't feel that it is impossible. They do it all the time in the movies! No but seriously, there is nothing more enjoyable and rewarding than living The Gospel of Jesus Christ. Repentance can be a very difficult process, but I know it is worth it. I know that our Heavenly Father still loves you more than you know. He wants you to be on the train. He wants you to start to walk again up the escalator even if you feel you have reached the bottom. There is still hope! There is always hope. There is always a way back. It is always worth it. Keep up the great work my friends. Especially on those days when you feel like you are taking steps but still feel like you are falling behind. The important thing is you keep going!

P.S. I haven't forgotten about the answer to the question in my last post...I will chat about that next :) until then...think happy thoughts!! :)