The Summer Of Wounds And Scars

July started off with a bang. We watched the fireworks show over the lake on our ten-day camping trip, then on the morning of the fifth, I was at the doctor’s office having a nasty staph infection drained and packed.

During that camping trip, two words showed up in my life and made an almost-daily presence for the next two months: Let go.

The staph infection took almost the entire month of July to heal. I still have a very noticeable mark on my leg. I finally gave up on hiding it with a bandaid. It is what it is.

In addition to the staph infection, by the first of August, I was preparing to have the hysterectomy my doctor had informed me I needed back in June. The abdominal pain was almost non-stop by then. Three days before my surgery, I doubled over in blinding pain and immediately started vomiting. After a trip to the ER, I returned home to my bed where I waited until time for surgery.

After surgery, the doctor informed my husband, “It was a mess in there,” and the cyst was the size of a grapefruit. We had no idea I had been dealing with severe endometriosis.

Almost immediately, I began feeling better, but spent an entire week in bed, taking pain meds around the clock. I needed help with everything for the first few days: getting out of bed, turning over or bending over alone wasn’t an option. My mother-in-law and my husband took care of the house, the kids, and me. When I wasn’t asleep, I was bored to tears by mind-numbing tv shows.

I was forced to rest . . . to let go.

I’ve felt better in the past four weeks than I have in months, and possibly years. However, recovery has been excruciatingly slow . . . especially since I’m used to being busy.

I’ve had plenty of time to wrestle with God. I don’t know how Jacob did it — holding on after being wounded and demanding a blessing {Gen. 32:24-32}. Two months of being told to let go, and I fought him every way I knew how: pleading, screaming, silence, sarcasm.

I even started limiting my time from outside influences . . . very little tv, reading or social media. I was sick of hearing and reading, Let go. Those two words seemed to be everywhere, and I wanted away from them. But God will say what He wants to say, and He made sure I heard those words even at my daughter’s birthday party.

Last week, I gave up the fighting. I told God he’d won — not in the sarcastic way I had many times before. This time I was just weary. I sat on my front porch and told him I was tired of fighting him. I’d look for the good in whatever was left of my hopes and dreams, but I was done. Still, even as I let go, I asked {with low expectations} for a blessing, a promise to be kept.

The events of this summer have physically slowed me down. I don’t have a limp like Jacob, but I certainly own the wounds and scars . . . some are visible and some aren’t.  I may not have seen God face to face, but I certainly have experienced him. And, like Jacob, I can say that my life has been preserved, meaning delivered . . . or as I like to think of it, let go.

Unexpected blessings have begun to trickle into my open hands. Isn’t that how God works sometimes? We wrestle until we absolutely have to let go, and we’re left with scars to remind us that only he can deliver us into unexpected blessings.