Little Piggy Problems

This little piggy has a problem. No, it's not the little piggy that went to market, not the little piggy that had roast beef - the one in between. Yes, that one! The little piggy that stayed home. On my left foot. It's been sore for quite a long time, but it's always easy to put it out of my mind because it's such a little thing. I thought I must have broken it and it was taking a long time to heal. Who spends a lot of time thinking about their little piggy toes? Not me!

When it was time to see a podiatrist after my recent diagnosis of pre-diabetes, I told him I thought I had broken it a while back, and it was still sore.

"I'd like to get an X-ray of that toe," he said. We were off to the X-ray room. It only took a minute to look at it, and he said it looked like osteomyelitis in the second digit. When he showed it to me, I could see the darkening - meaning the bone was eaten away - and easily agreed to an MRI. Now, I've had a lot of those things, and they usually portend something rather serious. And I'm used to going in head first. Imagine how silly I felt going to the radiation center, and just putting my left foot in. I felt totally upside down!

That's what it was, all right. Osteomyelitis of the distal and probably middle phalanx of the second digit, accompanied by mild soft tissue edema.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The bone in your toe is infected, and if your immune system would ever be compromised, that infection could go to your heart valves. We need to do surgery to open it up, scrape, then flush out as much of the infection as we can. Then you will be on antibiotics for a while."

I was sick all over! My whole body could be compromised because of infection in one little toe! Never before had my one little toe been so significant to me.

How I was reminded that it's the same way the body of Christ is all knit together, and in I Cor. 12:26, it says, "And when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it." Each member of the body of Christ - each Christian - is extremely important, and is needful of all the care the rest of the body can give it.

While relating this development to another Dr. who watches over us well, he looked at me and said, "Are they going to amputate?" Of course I assumed he was teasing, and replied, "I've always said, when it came to surgery, that anything I have two of, or am through with, they can have. And I have ten of those!"

Found out he wasn't teasing! Bone infections are very difficult to get rid of, and sometimes if the infection is really bad, they do amputate! Oh, my. I kinda like my little piggy that stayed home. I think I'll give it a little more respect after this.

In the same chapter of I Cor. 12, verse 23 says, "Yes, we are especially glad to have some parts that seem rather odd!" I thought back to the time, when our daughter, Julie, was all focused on a toe, and said what an odd thing a toe all by itself would be. I think she was in Jr. High, and strange thoughts came and went on a regular basis. "Wouldn't it be wierd, Mom, if you just saw a toe all by itself on the sidewalk when you were walking uptown?" It is odd to contemplate a loose toe all by itself, removed from the body. Only Julie could come up with a vision like that! You always sort of think of toes as connected to a foot!

So Paul summed it all up in verse 27: "Now here is what I am tring to say: all of you together are the one body of Christ and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it."

Sorta made my little piggy that stayed home pretty significant! And I feel sort of significant being connected to you all who are in the body of Christ. May we take good care of each other.