Dirty Nails
Burying Pain Never Comes Free
I've never dug a grave with my bare hands.
At least not a literal one.
But I've spent enough years trying to bury things to know what it feels like.
The sore muscles. The exhaustion. The dirt that finds its way beneath your fingernails and refuses to come out no matter how hard you scrub. Some things leave a mark on the hands that buried them.
For most of my life, I thought healing and hiding were the same thing. If I could move on fast enough, work hard enough, stay busy enough, pray enough, distract myself enough, eventually the problem would disappear beneath the surface. Out of sight. Out of mind. Out of the story.
At least that's what I told myself.
The trouble is that buried things have weight. Even when they're underground, you're still the one carrying the shovel. And the longer you carry it, the heavier it becomes.
Some of us are still digging holes for things God never asked us to bury.
Grief. Fear. Questions. Disappointment. Parts of our testimony we're embarrassed to tell.
We treat these things like enemies when they're really evidence that we've lived through something. So we keep digging, convinced that distance is the same thing as freedom. We sweat. We strain. We exhaust ourselves trying to create enough space between who we are now and whatever still hurts.
But eventually you stop and look at your hands.
That's when you notice the dirt.
The scratches.
The damage.
The cost.
Because burying pain never comes free. It always takes something from us.
I wonder how many people are exhausted not because life is hard, but because they're spending all their energy digging around wounds, memories, conversations they don't want to have, and truths they don't want to face. They spend years trying to keep something covered while God is standing nearby offering healing for the very thing they're trying to hide.
Maybe that's why Jesus spent so much time bringing hidden things into the light.
Not to expose people.
To free them.
There's a difference.
One produces shame.
The other produces healing.
The older I get, the more I realize that freedom rarely begins with a shovel. It begins with surrender. With setting the shovel down. With admitting that some things don't need to be buried because they were never meant to stay underground.
Some things need to be healed.
Some things need to be grieved.
Some things need to be confessed.
Some things need to be handed to God.
Maybe the dirt beneath your nails isn't proof that you're broken. Maybe it's proof that you're tired. Tired of carrying what was never yours to carry. Tired of digging holes that never stay full. Tired of fighting battles God has been asking you to release.
Some things belong in the ground.
But some things belong at the feet of Christ.
Knowing the difference can change a life.
And maybe that's where healing finally begins.
Not with another shovel.
But with open hands.
∆∆∆