During an intense family game of “keep away” when we lived in the village, my husband experienced an ugly encounter with a thorny tree in our host family’s courtyard. He managed to hold on to the ball, but landed flat on the ground with a deep gash in his forehead. 

Horrified, I hastily consulted our village medical manual, Where There is No Doctor, and the pictures caused my stomach to flip flop, confirming my decision that I would NOT try the homemade stitches. 

Thankfully I was able to reach our American doctor friend in the city several hours away who said he didn’t think we needed to travel all the way there for medical care. Unsure of the quality of local care, we ruled out seeking stitches at a nearby clinic. Instead, I followed the doctor’s advice to cut the sticky ends off some band-aids and use them to hold the two sides of the gaping skin together. 

Also following his advice, our teenagers ventured out in search of super glue, trying to evade the store owner’s probing questions of its intended use. “No, not exactly for wood...” 

Our doctor friend’s calm words over the phone, “Don’t worry. It will heal” brought reassuring comfort as my husband lay on the couch moaning in pain. They spoke peace as I fretted over an undesirable outcome. 

The wound would heal; it would just be a matter of what kind of scar would be left behind. 

Isn’t that true in life as well? 

In Embracing Brokenness, Alan Nelson writes, “Just because a person goes through a time of breaking does not mean the result will be good. Most people end up broken in the wrong places.” 

“Remember Jesus’ question to the poor invalid who was lying beside the pool of Bethesda? ‘Do you want to be healed?’... Jesus recognizes that each of us has the God-given right to make our own choices. No one can take that prerogative from us. Until we choose to let go and let God have His will and way in our lives, we cannot receive healing.” 

Will we offer Him our wounds in order to receive His healing?