Healing

Sitting at my desk today, I found myself mindlessly rubbing my left index finger against my thumb several times. It took me a while to realize that the itch to which I was subconsciously reacting was the last bit of dead skin over the spot into which I had so delicately jammed the curvy, nail-remover part of a hammer last week. (Redecorating = hazard of moving #485.) As I inspected the site, I was glad – and rather impressed – to see how completely I’d healed so soon after my little incident.

But it was not as if I could congratulate myself on a job well done. Sure, I cleaned up right after it happened, but save a handful of times something stung the open wound, I didn’t pay that much attention to my injured thumb. But God made our bodies to be stunningly resilient, and even in this microscopic instance the Great Physician was faithful.

If God is so good to this body of mine, which isn’t even going to last another hundred years, why do I doubt the goodness of His work in my immortal soul? The last few weeks I have struggled so much with not being good enough. Not trusting God enough. Not being whole in the way others seem to be. So I’ve tried to fix it by digging out what I considered to be the bad stuff. I tried to make myself believe that I didn’t care whether I was able to continue working on the Hill, that being invisible to people I wanted to care about didn’t bother me.

Thankfully, the self-deception didn’t stick. Authenticity matters, and even I couldn’t buy the product I was trying to sell myself.

Healing happens because God is the God of great reversals – making the lame walk and the blind see – in both the physical and spiritual realms. I can no sooner cause my own thumb to heal than make myself “good enough” for God or anyone else. That’s not to say I can’t do things that impede or support the progress of healing – but I am not the one ultimately able or ultimately responsible. God is. And He is in the process of healing my doubts, my misconceptions, my world-stained heart… even when I don’t see it.

I hope the little scar below the knuckle on my left thumb will always remind me of that.