Heather Bush

Do we not have to go throughout our lives enduring lash after lash that tare great gashes of flesh into our backs as well?

Are we not enduring the very same but of a slightly different experience?

Nothing new is under the sun.

One more scar is nothing I should have been surprised by. And yet I was.

Yet precious few actually discussed and dressed these wounds. But I am eternally thankful for them.

The thing about wounds is that they require novocaine, sutras a period of healing and then the sutras need to be removed.

Once when I split my elbow to upper bicep open after crashing my bike, I had a concerned neighborhood mother pour hydrogen peroxide on it and wash it out. Then upon arriving at the doctors, after 3 injections of novocaine, the doctor was unable to administer the process of stitching me back together because the novocaine did not take. We had to reschedule.

Isaiah 53:5 says “By His stripes we are healed”. But does our own process of justification of our own faith and its consequential process of personal sanctification require an echoing of His struggle?

I am daily or even hourly awaiting for the Holy Spirit’s administration of novocaine to take effect against the enemy as I lay in this foxhole awaiting the resurrection of my belief fully to allow the stitching together process begin.

The nightmares, interruption of sleep patterns, battles with eating and migraines no doubt are emotionally, neurologically and spiritually intertwined.

For this, at this level, there is no one to intervene on a physical plain. There have been outside steps taken to address these issues but the culmination of these together call for an intervention of a higher power.

It echoes back the same cry of “why hast thou forsaken me?”, saying “it is finished” and dying to three days later be resurrected. My three days is approaching four months most acutely, but three years when looked at in the longview.

There are precious few moments I can pray for myself, yet I still gladly pray and trust those prayers will be answered for when praying for others… as if I am mentally, emotionally and spiritually lost within an M. C. Escher sketch.

So I had asked, well truth be told, “told” God “You need to prove yourself to me”.  Although I didn’t really want to go to Bible study tonight I had agreed that I’d give Him another shot (partially because I wanted to be proven wrong) so I went so I could say I least kept up my end of the bargain.

We are going through Matthew 10: 26-30. Without going full throttle into a discourse on all these verses; here’s the ones where God showed up (this is Jesus speaking):

“What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭10‬:‭29‬-‭31‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Sparrows were about 1/16th of a day’s wages, so no one thought much of them, and yet God does. Then we’re presented with the idea of hair. We care about our hairstyles and how we look, true, but God takes such an interest in us that He knows exactly how many hairs are on our heads. Then here are two very important phrases; “do not be afraid” and “you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows”.

So what does this mean to me? That God cares so deeply about the most seemingly worthless of things that we take for granted and smallest of details and that I do not need to be afraid because I am worth more to Him than even an entire flock of sparrows. Wow.

When I close my eyes, I tend to see spirals first counterclockwise then clockwise which can either be of little consequence or quite disconcerting sometimes. Most recently it’s been more disconcerting because it feels like I can’t even escape the chaos because everything is swirling around so vehemently even when I close my eyes.

As we neared the end of our time at the study, we were asked if any of us had prayer requests. A wonderful older gentleman took down each of the many requests. We actually laughed that it was a good thing someone had been taking notes! But then this gentleman removed his hat and began to pray.

Like usual, when I closed my eyes, the spiraling began. But as I listened to this man, he did not just go down a list. He took the time to specifically request the appropriate needs of each individual or situation and made it personal. This respectful and heartfelt prayer was said with such (seemingly effortless) resulting eloquence, that the chaotic spiraling beneath my closed eyes became like the waves like you see on a heart monitor, steadily moving up and down but yet calm. Then they became like a tendril of a hollow golden tube flowing first from one slight long curve to the next, as if you were driving along a windy mountain roadway with the ocean waves still ebbing back and forth beneath you.

The spiraling effect did return, but this time it was not at the rapid, frenzied pace it has been, but with care, love and slowly and deliberately; as I imagine Van Gogh would have painted those famous yellow orbs in Starry Night.

It occurred to me then that yes, this spiral of existence is reality, but in prayer, it becomes more breathtaking than all the stars we see in the Milky Way. In fact, throughout this gentleman’s simple yet beautiful intercession, I was afforded the chance to not only acknowledge that although spiraling chaos will exist, but when praying, it (as in space), is different. The spirals become not inexplicable undertows and whirlpools I’m doomed to drown in, but rather a chance to glide softly through the cosmos in awe of the beauty of galaxies more innumerable than we can know of with any exact certainty…just like the number of hairs on our heads. Through prayer, our spirits can glide above the storms of the current moment without fear of falling because He cares enough to grant us wings.

I know my greatest strength and weakness is love. But I read and traveled the pathways of His great love for me simply by closing my eyes and listening not so much even to the words themselves that this man prayed, but the genuine desire of one individual to ask God to help others both known and unknown to him. It was God’s love I read and saw with closed eyes, but also heard because of a man’s love for his fellow man through prayer to the God of all creation – from the heavens, to the sparrows, to me.