Ripping the Ticks Off

I briefly watched a video this morning of turtles pulling ticks off a rhinoceros. The process obviously causes the rhinoceros pain, so it gets up and walks away. I hear in my head 'it is painful but necessary or he will die'. In other videos I watched, ticks were removed from kangaroos and from dogs. As they are being pulled off, you see their skin stretching, so you know it is painful, but the people and the animals removing the ticks do not stop. Often, the animals seem to allow it somehow, knowing it is necessary. Will I let my ticks be removed, or will I walk away?

At the end of one of the videos that shows crows removing ticks from kangaroos, the kangaroo that is being cleansed is a bloody mess. The areas where the ticks were embedded are bald and bleeding. But the kangaroo is healthier because of it. This is a lesson not easily lived. I want to say if this is what I’m going through, but that would be deceiving myself. Not something I am, thankfully, very good at. I know this is what I’m going through. The only question is, do I want it badly enough to allow the suffering?

As I ponder this on the way to work, I listen to a song from a Requiem Mass for the dead. 'If you do not allow your ticks to be removed you will die spiritually and emotionally.' Removing your ticks makes you feel as if you are dying. So to avoid death, you must allow what feels like death, reminding yourself that the feeling is just that—only a feeling. The feeling of death can seem worse than death itself because we have not yet experienced death. Our Lord died to save us from death, and so we must trust that death is far worse than the feeling of death that comes from being given life.

Interesting to me that the pain of being saved from death and the knowledge that it is the pain that I am to experience is not enough for me to allow it.

God allows crows into our lives that pick at our ticks knowing that if they are not torn from our flesh they will suck the life out of us. The longer the ticks have been feeding the deeper their mouthparts are embedded in our spiritual flesh and the more painful their removal and the more a mess we become in the process. It is only by knowledge of the goodness of the pain and mess and by the grace of God that we allow the removal and do not flee.

I remember when I was a kid, Dad was trying to get his cartoons published in a newspaper. They held his cartoons until they could find a place for them, and he could not stand the pain waiting caused him, so he asked for the cartoons back, which ruined his chance of getting published. The pain of waiting was intolerable. This was a crow picking at a tick, his impatience and desire for control, which he found unbearable. So he got his cartoons back and destroyed them. Threw them in the trash. He chose to keep the tick rather than deal with the pain necessary for its removal. He preferred the prison of control to the freedom of unpredictability. Do I prefer the ticks of control and predictability? Will I choose to keep them embedded or allow them to be ripped out?

It’s strange to be so aware of God being at work and to resist Him, which is what I am doing. Most people don’t know they are resisting. I do and continue on with it.

This morning, the rhino allowed the ticks on his backside to be pulled for only so long that he couldn’t take them anymore. Am I at that point?

Revelation 3:19-20 “Whoever is dear to me I reprove and chastise. Be earnest about it, therefore. Repent! Here I stand, knocking at the door. If anyone hears me calling and opens the door, I will enter his house and have supper with him, and he with me.”

I am dear to God, so He sends the crows. Will I open the door to them and Him who sends them? Do I want to sup with Him that badly?

Human-Written, AI Spell-Checked 3/6/21 AD

Image from a pic taken from a YouTube video