Wounded
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. ~ Psalm 147:3
Often times we don't know why we do the things we do.
Two weeks ago in a rushed hurry I was cutting material for some signage for a work event and I cut right through the top left of my thumb. Honestly, I wasn't even thinking, I was a machine, trying to be the fastest I could, after all I had about 50 signs to put together for the weekend, and it was already 4:45 on Thursday.
It happened so fast, as all accidents do, and in a weird haze all of a sudden life is different.
I was driven to ER, and sat for 4 hours while every 1/2 hour or so another portion of the process of cleaning, and tending to my finger was completed.
The ER alone is a chaotic place, people in all varying stages of illness and brokenness. A young boy in the cot beside me was getting stitches and being very brave. An unknown woman in the room beside me was hacking something fierce, and while being wheeled from one place to another, a young boy with his tear stained mother stopped in front of me to puke.
And then there's me. My cell phone now dead. My finger soaking in a yellow plastic bowl of bloody water, waiting for them to help me. Waiting to be bound up. Waiting to get out of the sickly chaos and get home.
That was two weeks ago. I have had my finger bandaged since and was instructed that because of the way the cut was, this type of bandage bonded to my skin and would wear off. Fine, I thought. Weird but fine.
So, here's me, for the past two weeks, changing the gauze around this weird, soaked with blood now black "cast" stuck to my finger, wondering when the pain will get better, wondering how my healing is coming.
I even read that passage above at church last week, and drew this great paralel to my wound being bandaged, and how sin is like that, this wound that we sever, bleeding out, till our Savior comes and bandages up the mess and heals us.
I didn't realize sometimes that's not the whole equation.
The human body is pretty amazing. Like my mom told me last night on the phone, our bodies are amazing machines, designed for the healing process, medicine simply comes and facilitates that healing, but our bodies desire to be whole and are created to become so.
Where am I going with all this? Besides trying to process this whole event to myself...
Yesterday I had my first check up, ofcourse, it should have been sooner I knew, but what were the doctors going to tell me, with this bandage that cannot come off my finger? I thought I'd pop in quickly after work and get it over with.
When I got there, I sat and waiting for an hour, before going in. To which I was told they were going to soak this bandage off. The doctor (who, by the way, looked to be about 85 and a sheriff, hunched over and limping) seemed concerned when I told him how long the bandage had been on my finger.
Fine, I was going to see my thumb, for the first time since the ER. My heart started to pound a bit. I knew I had cut off a bit, a fair bit, small enough tho that they couldn't sew it back on. But I was a bit worried.
Rightly so.
As the bandage began to get wet and loosen and I began to chip away at the hard blackness that had encassed my finger for the last two weeks something began to happen.
Puss, let's say a considerable amount, began to ooze, quite generously out from it's newly found escape route. And. I. Freaked. Out.
Sure enough my wound had become slightly infected, not being able to breathe. Blood had pooled considerably under the skin of my thumb as well, so when I first saw it it appeared black. Dead, I thought, but as I continued to, drain, it was moving too.
It was kind of a horrific experience. Especially so when the doctor came in and proceeded to clean me out, cutting out the infected skin, which was probably the most painful thing I have ever experienced.
If I ever wondered if I could get a tattoo, I think I would be fine.
3 hours later I was home. I was bandaged up again. Now the pain almost gone, thou every now and then I get a tinge of it and sends my heart racing because I do NOT want to go through that again.
I want to be healed. I want to be made whole again, though I also know the bit of my thumb will never grow back.
And I think of that verse again ... He HEALS the broken-hearted, and he binds up their WOUNDS.
I am learning a tough and multi-faceted lesson this year.
We have all been wounded in life. Whether physically or emotionally, relationally, spiritually even. And it's one thing to bind up a wound, but its a whole other deal to be healed. And I wonder how many of us wander our lives, with these wounds bound but not whole. Bandaged but we have not let the Great Physician come and uncover our hearts, clean out what's been festering so we can truly experience healing.
It's not an easy road. And it hurts like a mother.
But it's worth it to be made whole by our Shepherd.
Till Next Blog ~ love a.
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