There is a hole where there ought to be curved flesh. I ache and quiver from pain, but also from something deeper.
This is not me.
I don’t like this.
I don’t want to look at it.
At myself.
Surgery only days before. Doctors talking about me, through me. When I asked for pain relief, justification for not receiving it was flimsy, but still denied. Today, like others, I wait and ‘manage’ to do the essentials before a nurse arrives. She changes dressings, cleans the wound, chatting merrily while I sit exposed, in abject horror at the crater in my flesh. She takes graphic medical photos, tries again – yes the light is better. I try to look away but cannot quite manage to put off my curiosity.
One, maybe up to two inches. I can’t quite glimpse the back of the cavity in my hasty glance down. White, either fat or ducts. And red, but somehow, not bleeding flesh. How can this possibly heal? Will the shape remain the same, gaping and empty, with skin covering it?
Almost three months later, the nurse says that it is no longer making progress. The healing is ‘stale’ and has slowed dramatically. I am sent for the wound to be cut up again, made fresh.
Some more time passes, and I cannot believe that where there once was nothing, it is now filled in. As if someone has used a slow but miraculous flesh glue stick. Each turn has made the hollow shallower until the levels meet. Marked disruption to pigment and texture but that is all. There is no longer an absence but rather an appearance of something new.
God’s creative power didn’t end at creation. His design and power are still evident in the wonder of how our bodies function. Despite things going wrong, we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Healing is still more run by our bodies than the doctors. The doctors cut away the unhealthy flesh in me, but God caused my body to heal.
It is so easy to look at the wounds and holes in our lives and falsely believe that they now define us. Hard even, to envision a future where our current struggles no longer hold us back. Perhaps you have suffered a loss in your life that has hollowed out your life to the point of an altered identity. Maybe you have faced relationship or health issues and are fighting to rebuild a life for yourself. God is a healer. God is a restorer. God is not finished with us yet. God is not of this throw away generation. He will not cast us aside when we become scarred or broken. He will restore us, both now and to fit us for heaven.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary. But what is unseen in eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16, 18.