Deep Wounds, And How They Heal - Joyfully Pressing On
Spoiler alert: My wound is not healed and I might mention blood.
This post is not about scars and it’s not about surgery. It’s not about a dozen metaphors that raced to mind for very real emotional and spiritual wounds. It’s not about how sometimes our good God wounds, or even about his rich wounds.
It’s not about those.
It’s about two thing that my gaping abdominal wound is teaching me about about how wounds heal.
Blood Heals Wounds
The law says that almost everything must be made clean by blood, and sins cannot be forgiven without blood to show death.
Hebrews 9:22, ESV
Four weeks post-op, the inch-long, quarter-inch wide scab fell off. Then I saw the truth. My wound was far from healed. It was a fleshy, red, nickel-sized mess.
But my wound-care specialist assures me: “Red is good. It means healthy tissue.” The life is in the blood. So rubbing Q-tips inside my wound and bringing them out bright red is good. Because, she said, “The blood cleans the wound.”
Healed From Inside Out
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
Jeremiah 6:14, ESV
I am also learning that wounds heal from the inside out. For that reason, puncture wounds shouldn’t scab over too soon. Mine did. I’m told that that hard cap kept oxygen from doing its healing work.
But I didn’t know. Beneath the surgical glue, that hard, wide scab looked great all month. To my untrained eye, it looked like a perfectly healing wound.
When I told a nurse friend this week about my Hydrofera Blue wound dressing—AKA: “my purple plug”— she nodded knowingly. “It healed too fast. Life a half-baked cake.”
A Half-Baked Cake
The people of Israel mingle with godless foreigners, making themselves as worthless as a half-baked cake!
Hosea 7:8, NLT
Like Hosea’s cake unturned, a half-baked pancake. That’s how God’s word picture for the sinful character of his people, Israel. They were clueless. They were “overexposed to bad things, and underexposed to God.”
That is my wound. Cooked on top, doughy and raw on the inside. Mine was a superficial healing. Which is to say, no healing at all.
I want to launch off on the other ten spiritual wounding and healing tangents right about now. I won’t. I’m committed to being mercifully short.
Do you have “lightly healed” wounds—scabbed over scars that hide gaping holes? Do you have deep wounds that need the cleansing blood?
Slow And Sure
I’m learning that deep wounds close slowly. Slowly, I’m learning life-giving truths about wounds.
I’m learning that superficial healing is not healing. That the outside can smooth and dry while the inside cries. That tender, itchy skin, not thick, hard scabs indicate healing. I’m learning, afresh, that blood cleanses and heals, even deep wounds.
Slow and sure, we will heal. I’m learning.
In our dealings with God let us…ask that He will not spare us, or give us anything less than the best.
The process may be painful and protracted, but it will be sure.
—F.B. Meyer, cite in Enduring Word Bible Commentary, on Jeremiah 6:14
