Wounds on the Doctor

This has not been a good season for my body.  My bike accident left me with deep bruises and my knees are still not fully scabbed over, tender.  Last week I cut my finger deeply while cutting fabric to repair a skirt . . .stitches seemed like too much bother but that turned out to be a bad decision as the wound reopens and bleeds.  (Yes, I’m clumbsy and easily distracted!)   I’ve had so many bandaids plastered around that I’ve developed an allergic reaction to the plasters.  Most troublesome has been a chronic ear infection, a perforated ear drum that still carries a scab and does not move normally.  My hearing is decreased, I sound to myself like I’m in a well, popping and crackling when I swallow.  Whenever I get too discouraged Scott looks in with an otoscope and tells me it is improving . . . Be patient.  Being A PATIENT is a bitter medicine in itself.  I need to grow in humility and patience, but I’d like the short cut.  That seems to be what Satan offers in Luke 4 when he meets Jesus in the wilderness:  here are good things, bread, rule, fame, God’s protection . . .  but why not take the non-suffering path to get there?  Yes, that sounds tempting.  Jesus however resists.  He sees clearly that the path to redemption involves the cross.  

No cross for me, just the constant reminder to everyone to repeat what they say and talk more loudly, the reluctance to sing when my own voice reverberates in my head, the awkwardness of cooking and typing and washing dishes while protecting a lacerated finger, the short searing pain of pulling off bandages on my legs.  

But a glimpse of redemption along the path.  When my ear was at its worst, we got a random email connection from a lady who supports work in the DRC.  She sent photos and a description of a boy who was at their orphanage.  He had had a severe infection as a young child, and now was ten but never spoke and was socially withdrawn.  Since I was also feeling socially isolated by my lack of hearing, I wondered if the boy’s muteness could be related to deafness, possibly his infection years ago had been meningitis, and now he could not hear.  This week she wrote back and confirmed that the boy was seen by a doctor and was indeed deaf, and they have already raised money to send him to learn sign language so he can communicate.  I’m sure they would have figured this out eventually . .. But God let it happen this way to encourage me to trust His bitter medicine of patience in sickness, faith in redemption.  Why shouldn’t a doctor have wounds, since a Saviour does?