Almost 140 years after the infamous shoot out at the OK Corral, Tombstone AZ continues to cause damage. Yep, I got wounded in Tombstone just this fall. Sheila and I spent a week at a Tempe timeshare, and I’d recently discovered Luke Short, a part owner of the Oriental Saloon there and fellow gambler with Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, was my great uncle. So I headed southeast for some family research, leaving Sheila to relax at the pool and see a girlfriend.
Standing on the rough wooden sidewalk of the old Grand Hotel, where Luke likely lived (now the Big Nose Kate Saloon), I left some papers on a bench and stepped into the dirt street to shoot a pic of the old Campbell and Hatch Saloon, where Morgan Earp had been ambushed and killed. Upon returning, a breeze softly blew the papers onto the sidewalk, so I bent down to pick them up. However, under the paper was a splinter of the sidewalk, and I drove it pretty deep into my right middle finger, just under the nail.
Yeah it hurt some, but not at all to the level of a .45 bullet from the old days. My Swiss Army knife didn’t have any tweezers and the small blade wouldn’t pry it loose, so the annoyance continued on the 170-mile trip back to Tempe.
One my return Sheila asked how the trip was, and I jokingly said “I got wounded in Tombstone.” She pulled out her tweezers and worked on it, with a bit more pain with each attempt. But once the splinter was extracted, the pain disappeared. The finger was sensitive for half a day, then all the discomfort disappeared.
Been wounded? By your own actions, or others, or decisions you’ve made? Here’s some Tombstone lessons about wounds I picked up that day.
Be a duck sometimes. Or, ignore it…let it roll off like water off a duck’s back. We’re all flawed, we live in a flawed world, with flawed family and friends and coworkers and neighbors. Stuff happens, and we can let a lot pass. I like Peter’s advice, “love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Let our love be practical—to others and ourselves. But sometimes the wound can’t be ignored, so…
Deal with it quickly. I’ve allowed actual and figurative splinters to fester, which merely makes it all worse. So, once we’ve determined it needs to be dealt with, don’t wait for “the right time.” We all tend to procrastinate here, but “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” (Ephesians 4:26). And sometimes that means we…
Do surgery. Or, we get rid of the cause. The splinter. Or worse. We may need to eliminate some habits we have, some holding on to wrongs others have done to us. And that can include some toxic relationships. I suspect that’s a key part of growing up: being willing to say goodbye to what doesn’t work for good, “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out” (Mark 9:47). Clearly, Jesus meant this figuratively.
Half a day after pulling that splinter, everything was fine with the finger. May it also be with our souls.
Kick Starting the Application
How effective are you at ignoring smaller wounds? How can you improve? Like me, do you tend to procrastinate dealing with significant issues? Does that generally help or make it worse? Can you, like me, be a little too stubborn at holding on to issues that don’t work for you? Why do you hold on too long, and how can you speed it up?
Now Big Nose Kate’s Saloon, was the Grand Hotel
Campbell and Hatch Saloon and Pool Hall