I Got a Boo Boo...

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So forever and a day ago, I had an accident. I'll spare you all the details, but I was going down a steep hill in the park and unbeknownst to me, there was a piece of a metal sign post that had been removed jutting up from the ground. My foot found it. It pierces through my soccer sandal and into my foot. Ambulance was called. Hospital was visited. Stitches were applied. Crutches were donned. Yikes.
I was in the middle of my freshman year of college at the time, studying to be a teacher because it seemed like the safe and responsible thing to do. Trying to get around on crutches was miserable. I tried it for a bit but I just couldn't hack it. My classes were too spread out and driving was a pain. So I ended up missing a lot. And my foot wasn't healing well.

Eventually it healed enough that I could get off crutches but it still hurt a little. The stitches were the kind that just dissolved over time or something like that. It still hurt too much to walk around for too long. I eventually just got so behind in school, I stopped going. I was officially "kicked out" a little while later because I had missed my finals and was flunking. My foot just wouldn't stop hurting.I lost my insurance because of school, so I didn't go see anyone.

About a few months after it all happened, the wound came back open again. My foot hurt so bad. There was this weird black stuff coming out. I was terrified. I kept pushing the stuff back in ( I know...sorry this is so gross but please stay with me, I do have a point!) and bandaging it all back up. I had to do this over and over. My foot hurt so bad. So did my heart. I was so angry with God. He was wrecking all my plans.

One day my mom informed me that I had a week left still on the insurance. Feeling like a moron for not knowing this sooner, I immediately made an appointment. I forced my friend Marysa to come with me because I was terrified. I went to the appointment. The doctor said scary things like "bone infection" and surgery. Seeing how it was now Thursday and I had one day left on my insurance, this was so exciting to me (note the sarcasm). Then she took me in for an x-ray. I prayed so hard on the exam table waiting for her to take the scan.

"Lord please let it be something stupid that they can fix with a band-aid."

So after the x-ray they couldn't really find anything so she referred me to an orthopedist for the following day. I went to the appointment, Marysa in tow, praying the whole way:

"Lord please let it be something stupid that they can fix with a band-aid."

The orthopedist looks at my foot, throws around more scary medical terminology and then says, "Let just take a closer look, shall we? We may have to do surgery."

So he looks at my foot for a minute, pulls something out of the wound and then says, "Or maybe we'll just put a band-aid on it and you'll be fine by tomorrow."

Marysa and I looked at each other slightly stunned. Upon deeper inspection, the "weird black stuff" was actually a piece of my soccer sandal that had gotten left in my foot. Because of the foamy material it was made out of, it didn't show up on x-rays. I stupidly had mistaken it for tissue or some weird foot insides. Oops. My poor foot. There it was trying to heal itself and I just kept inflicting more wounding. Marysa and I just started laughing hysterically. The doctor looked at us like we were nuts.

Later on, I was telling my other friend, Therese the days events.

"Well, I got my wish. It was definitely something stupid that can be fixed with a band-aid. But I can't help wondering: why did the Lord let me go through all that crap, all that pain, just for it all to be fixed with a band-aid?"

She thought for a moment then said, "Well, I guess if it didn't hurt so much, you wouldn't have remembered it."

Sometimes in life the Lord is trying so hard to heal us and we fight so hard against it. We hold on to the very thing he's trying to remove because we're scared what will happen to us without it. We push it all back in, slap a band-aid on it and try to pretend we aren't hurting. In the end though, there is so much wisdom to it.

 I'm so glad I didn't finish school (shocking, I know.) It wasn't the right path for me. This one moment, painful as it was, changed the course of my life. I went on to have so many other adventures. I'm still having them. These adventures have led to so much healing in my heart and peace in my soul. Healing that may never had happened had I carried on in my safe little world. He knew so much better than I did what was needed to find freedom. It took a little wound and some crutches to wake me up. It took a little pain to remember He is bigger than my plans.

The scar left on my foot is tiny. I cannot imagine how much worse it could have been had I had surgery. Act now, while the scarring is minimal. Let Him heal you. Let Him remove the pain. Let Him remove the unneeded element. It doesn't take surgery. It just takes your yes. His love is the band-aid. His blood the healer.