I sliced the palm of my hand.
On Tuesday.
That was two days ago.
It hurt a bit when it happened. But pain was really the afterthought. I felt something sharp and glanced at it a couple minutes later when I brushed it against the fabric of my shorts and jumped a little when something stung.
It was bleeding.
But just a little.
The wound was small.
It was no big deal.
I'd live.
For real.
I didn't think about it again. I mean, not until I managed to get a little bleach water in it and I thought my whole hand was going to fall off. *
But then I was really done thinking about it. I am the captain of arbitrary injuries. It would grow back. I would be fine. Not going to lose sleep or waste tears over something so dumb.
But then I DID think about it. And, actually, did lose sleep. Last night, 36 hours after receiving the injury, I lay awake, nursing my pathetic hand. My palm HURT. As it had most of the day. The pain wasn't unbearable, but it was noticeable. And obnoxious. The cut burned red and hot and the severed nerve endings burned.
The injury? It hurt. There was a little pain involved. But the real pain? The real anguish of the mark? The reality lies in the healing.
Why do I now experience pain? Because it's trying to heal.
It seems odd that this should be the hard part. Shouldn't the infliction of the wound cause the most damage and be the most challenging part of the whole experience?
But that's not the case? Is it?
By now you've probably gathered I'm not talking about the one inch slice to add to my injury collection. I'm talking about life. Because sometimes life hurts. And certainly life is full of opportunities to inflict pain.
Why is it that the pain doesn't end at the infliction? Why is it that there is so much more pain in the process of healing?
My mind fills with examples and illustrations. From my life and the lives of those whom I've had the honor of intersecting with my own. Pictures of pain. Moments of injury... Betrayals by friends. Divorce and break ups and split ups. Death and loss and abandonment. Abuse and misuse and corruption. Transition and change and opportunity. Bitterness and biting words and destroyed character and disheveled lives... And the list goes on...
As if the occurrence weren't painful enough...
Every memory, every scar, every attempt towards wellness and wholeness. Every day with the storm clouds covering the sun and drowning the ability to breath deep. Every time we clench our eyes closed and a vice is placed around our heart so that we feel a physical pain in our chest and we try not to cry as we try one more time to let go... To forgive. To abandon. To surrender. To heal.
We don't always see it as healing. It's sometimes hard to see healing in the midst of something that still hurts.
We don't like pain. We don't like anguish or discomfort or anything that puts us ill at ease. We would rather be numb until everything was magically all better.
And yet in some ways the act of healing pain is only proof that one is truly and very much alive...
Some pain must be endured in order for restoration to happen.
And isn't restoration what healing is all about?
Sometimes we want to be well.
But we also need to be whole.
Oh but to be both whole AND well!
There is pain in becoming whole. Just as there is pain in being made unwell. But where one pain destroys, the other slowly but surely restores.
I pray that as I allow the places in life that still hurt (far outside of my sliced hand) to move towards both a wholeness and wellness, rooted in restoration, that God too will continue to restore me to Himself...
"Heal me oh LORD and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise." [Jeremiah 17:14]
"And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast..." [1 Peter 5:10]
*minor exaggeration but really not too far from the truth.
