The Cure

Even eighteen months post-trauma (such a misleading label) I had a hole the circumference of a half-dollar on the side of my leg.  Internally my body had worked to heal lungs, kidney, spleen, and bladder.  It had grown a femur around the rod in my leg, regenerated bony matter in my wrist and fibula, and closed up fractures in my ribs and sternum.  
It had performed heroically. But the superficial wound to my calf was not a priority, so my body delegated efforts elsewhere.  
Emotional healing also comes with a built-in ranking, but it seems to work in reverse.  
It happens in layers, with the deeper wounds being exposed as time passes.  We would not have the courage to face the damage all at once; it is mercy that our brains limit the awareness and focus to one strata at a time.  How amazing that our fearfully and wonderfully made selves select what our minds process in order of survival, so that the vital functions are preserved.  Further down the road comes the work of healing the entirety of our psyche.

In physical and emotional rehabilitation, much takes place on a sort of auto-pilot.  Body and mind set their own pace of recovery, with health care professionals interjecting themselves when the timetable or path requires assistance.  
However, spiritual healing requires our full attention and cooperation.  Without introspection and purpose we feel easily satisfied that all is well and we are fine.  
Good, actually.  
Really doing well.  

In actuality, spiritual skin can appear unblemished while organs are failing.  Digging into the disease-laden muck lying below the surface is mortifying and painful, but it is vital.  And in ourselves we can neither see the need nor have we the ability to heal it.  The psalmist cried, "Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!" 
C.S. Lewis once again provides a perfect illustration in his depiction of Eustace, whose inner corruption has finally manifest as the hide of a dragon, needing to have his scales ripped away in order to be brought to spiritual healing.

The very first tear he made was so deep and I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

Faithfully throughout our lives God draws our attention to the next layer down.  And like Eustace, we begin to address what we see -- only to find God alone is able accomplish the deep healing. 
It would be nice, and fairly nearly true, to say that "from that time forth Eustace was a different boy." 
To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy...
The cure had begun.

To My Blog Readers:

It is a strange thing for me to think of you, the blog reader.  I process life on paper, with boxes of rumination stacked in closets and corners of more than one room in our house. I view my posts as pages of writing that I have left lying about...as if on a side table.  They are not the scribblings I immediately lock away, ashamed to even look at again myself (and certainly not intended for other eyes).  
There are no expectations for these bits I "publish", other than the idea that my reflections are common to many and will perhaps find assent in kindred spirits.

 Most recently, I posted on sorrow.  December, February and March are particularly difficult for three women I love -- as these months carry memories of the final days of painful suffering for a husband, a daughter, mother and father.  I think of my own grief as I think of theirs.  They are changed from the people they were, but God has faithfully forged beauty out of their endurance through affliction. 
 
I know they are not alone, and sorrow is not reserved for great tragedies.   
We live in a world corrupted by sin, and shadowed by death (the last enemy to be defeated).  
We do not grieve as those who have no hope ...but grieving is not a brief pause before passing on to the next thing.  It is a deep, dark, impossible time that shows God's grace BECAUSE of the immensity.

I'm thankful for those of you who have responded with love and assurances of prayer, since God promises He works through our petitions.  Somehow.  
I encourage you to not stop with me, though; I hadn't intended the post to be about me.  
All around us are human beings, painstakingly formed by God, who are feeling the next breath to be beyond them.  And sometimes, if we are honest, it is our own selves who need to be borne along to hope.

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the Lord has comforted his people
and will have compassion on his afflicted.

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me;
my Lord has forgotten me.”

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.  

Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.

When the Angry Surges Roll...

Sometimes sorrow comes with immensity, and it is not the nagging murmur I never thought I would long for.  It knocks the wind out of me and leaves me unable to breathe or feel the need for breath.  In that moment I cannot pray, but my very existence becomes a prayer:  "God, continue to hold the universe together -- hold me together.  Don't let me break apart under this and cease to be."

Such is the reality, even for a child of God.  The path through life is war-torn by sin, with collateral damage everywhere.  
The way of the cross does not bypass pain -- rather it is a road of suffering.  
And prayer is not always an ordered composition of historically accepted spiritual priorities; it is the cry of the wounded, the helpless moan of distress.
It holds a broken acknowledgement of dependency and a shadow of hope.  
While thankful for the Lord's Prayer given in answer to the disciples' question,  "How should we pray?",  I am most grateful that Christ promises to pray for me -- and that He gives form to my groanings.  
In His words on my behalf I hear the weight of carrying me.

I am praying for them.  I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.  All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.   And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.  Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

I am helpless.  But He knows that, and He is not.

Though Satan should buffet and trials should come,

Let this blest assurance control:

That Christ has regarded my helpless estate 

And has shed His own blood... for my soul.