Another extra thump in my chest, again, and again.
Pins and needles shoot through my body and I start to feel dizzy. Fear paralyzes me as I crumple to the ground.
“Not more of them, God! Why can’t you just take them away? I hate this, this feeling that my heart could just stop beating at any moment! I just want to move on and forget what happened to me.” I yell at God, alone in my bathroom that morning.
I say this as my thoughts travel once again to that day. My body so swollen that I am almost unrecognizable. My one week old baby lying next to me asleep. My husband sitting next to my hospital bed, his face ashen, his eyes filled with the fear he would never express in words, as we watch the monitor.
My heart rate is slowly dropping 35………………32………………….28.
I know I am close to death. I can feel it. I can feel the life slowly draining from my body. I try, but I cannot will my heart to beat. I have no choice, with each long pause between beats, to depend on God. To trust Him that He will keep my heart beating. To trust that He will take care of my family should it stop.
It is at that moment of remembering, yet again, that God speaks to me. “Those palpitations are battle scars. You have done battle and were wounded, but you are healed. What’s left are just the scars and they will fade over time. The scars you bear help you remember where you have been, what I have done and brought you through.”
You see, I was looking at my palpitations the wrong way. I thought they were a curse, but they were a blessing. My doctor had even told me they were benign, that my heart was just sensitive from the insult to it. They were evidence that I was alive and healed.
I am a nurse so God will often show me spiritual truths using our physical bodies as an example. This is a little of what He showed me about wounds. The physical healing of a wound is a process. It heals from the inside out and forms a scab. Once that scab falls off it leaves a scar. It is a process that takes time.
Spiritually and emotionally our healing is a process too, a process that truthfully, many of us don’t want to walk through, but God wants us to walk through it with Him. We have all done battle. For some of us it is a physical battle, for others it is inside where no one can see, but God can. He wants us to turn to Him, broken, but completely dependent on Him.
Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28
He wants us to learn to trust Him as He walks with us, as He heals our wounds. It is all a part of the process.
Those who know your name trust in you, for you, O Lord, do not abandon those who search for you. Psalm 9:10
Last night, at our church's women event, Night Of Pink, as we were honoring those who had battled breast cancer, my mind once again went back to my own scars and what God had shown me. Once the wound has healed and all that’s left is the scar, the skin where the scar is, is sensitive to the touch but eventually becomes stronger than before. Stronger, but never the same.
Spiritually I was walking defeated, paralyzed with fear and anxiety, but all along God had set me free. I just had the scar. The scar that I thought brought me down and kept me in that wounded place, but really brought me power.
Power to live fully, knowing that death did not claim me. Thankful for God’s mercy and faithfulness!
You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing, you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy. Psalm 30:11
I’ll end by sharing a piece of a song by Point of Grace.
“Heal the wound, but leave the scar
A reminder of how merciful you are
I am broken, torn apart,
Take the pieces of my heart and
Heal the wound but leave the scar”
No comments:
Post a Comment