Thoughts from my thumb

No, my thumb isn't thinking.  I am thinking about my thumb.  Weird, right?  Keep reading...

So I recently injured myself during one of my cooking adventures.  I literally took off part of my thumb while chopping an onion.  Yeah, I know - I'm super coordinated and graceful and all that....

Anyway, as my thumb healed, I was struck by how all kinds of healing can be very similar.  Sometimes in life, we have other types of wounds - wounds in our hearts.  These can be just as painful (sometimes more) than being physically hurt.  It seems to be that the healing process for bodily injury and the wounds of our heart have a lot in common.

- At first, my thumb hurt so much that I just kept it wrapped up all the time.  I didn't let any air get to it at all because even that increased my pain.  When I finally took the bandage off a few days later to let my doctor check on it, it smelled terrible.  Seriously - really bad.  Have you ever had an experience that hurt so much that you could hardly even think abou it -  let alone talk about it?  To bring it out into the open seemed like it would be so painful that you weren't sure if you could stand it?  And all the while, it's there under the surface, hurting and stinking.  It's super hard, but true healing can't happen until the wound has been allowed to see the light of day.

- Just days after I hurt myself, I was ready to be done with the whole thing.  I really wanted my thumb to be better.  I knew that it would eventually heal, but I also knew that this would take time.  But, I didn't want it to take time - I wanted the use of thumb back, and I wanted it NOW!  I didn't want to have to keep taking medicine every few hours just to take the edge off.  I wanted the pain to go away and stay away.  The doctor told me, "It's going to have to heal from the inside out, so it'll be like this for a while."  Right....  The hurts of our hearts also have to heal from the inside out.  And it takes time - more time that we would like usually.  Once we've allowed our wound to be aired out, we want relief.  Maybe we understand it won't be instant relief, but we sure don't want the pain to last any longer that it absolutely has to.  But you can't cheat pain.  And you can't cheat time.

- As my thumb was healing, it went through various stages of looking "okay" to looking "wow- pretty gross".  It's not like it started out bad and just kept looking better and better.  It would look better, then worse again, then better again.  Our other pains are like that, too.  Some days we take a breath and think "I think it's getting better."  Other days, the pain is ugly and overwhelming again.  Healing is not a straight path.

- The night that I injured myself, the ER doctor told me "That part of your thumb and fingernail won't grow back."  Yes, it's a small injury (and I don't want to make it seem like I've lost a limb or something), but still - part of me is now different than it used to be.  When painful things happen to us, it's natural to want to "just go back to normal".  We wish we could erase the pain, "move on", or "get over it."  The truth is, painful things change us.  We can't go back to how life was before it happened.  We are different now.  It doesn't have to be a bad thing or a good thing - it just is the way it is.   

 - Update!  So, I started this blog post a couple of weeks ago.  My thumb still looked really bad and was obviously missing part of itself.  Well, the healing has continued and I'm happy to report that things are looking better than I'd imaged they would.  My thumb in "rounding out" nicely, so it no longer looks flat on one side.  And the nail is actually starting grow back.  So here's the thing - the above paragraph is no less true - pain changes us.  AND sometimes it doesn't change us as much as we thought it would.  Sometimes, the part of our lives we thought we wouldn't get back, ends up unexpectedly returning to us. 

I'm glad my thumb is healing.  It's so amazing to have the use of it back again.  Although, I was getting pretty good at the "pointer finger - middle finger  claw grasp".  :)

We all have our pains and hurts that we carry around with us.  This is just the stuff of life.  My prayer for all of you is that you give your hurts a chance to heal.  Nothing is hopeless.  It may not be a walk in the park, but it's not hopeless. 

Until next time, my friends........ Live well

Becky