Healing Wounds – My Story of God’s Grace To Me

The other day I was driving around a part of town  I don’t usually drive by, trying to find the right road. As I turned this way and that, I realized where I was, and a flood of memories came bursting back into my head, and I felt the ache of them in my body.  I was passing the hospital that I gave birth at, and then returned to several times following complications.

The arrival of our daughter to our family was a whirlwind! She was our first, and as much as I thought I was prepared and ready to handle it, boy God was ready to humble me! After a few weeks of crying, no sleep, and grumpies (oh yeah she had all those too!) I felt like we were starting to maybe get the hang of it?

God had a different plan, and about a month into her little life, I came down with a fever. Because my birth was a C-section, we were worried about infection, so we got checked out at the doctor, and antibiotics were quickly prescribed to nip anything in the bud. I got better, for a while, but eventually the fevers came back. Over the next month I continued to feel worse and worse.

Eventually, after an ER visit, and multiple more Dr. visits, procedures, and misdiagnosis,  I was finally diagnosed with mastitis. By this time my chest pain was incredibly painful, which forced me to take heavy pain relievers to make it through the days. Soon, the heavier antibiotics I was taking were not good enough, and the infection had spread to an abscess. I went in for my first aspiration, where I was numbed, and a large needle stuck in to suck out the infection.  Each time the numbing went down, my chest left me with an incredible ache and pressure, and I continued to feel the hot, painful sting of infection. The draining was not effective, and I had to do it not once, but three more  times. I’ll save you the details, but we’ll just say that one repeat procedure sent me into a panic attack at the thought of doing it one more time. I wanted the infection gone, and nothing was seeming to work.

Eventually, after a MRSA diagnosis, three nights at the hospital with IV antibiotics that still resulted in no success- my doctors decided it was time to just do surgery.  I was relieved to try something different, surely this had to work?

As I woke up in the recovery room, the pain gripped at me again, overwhelmingly. My husband informed me that the abscess was much bigger than anticipated, and we had both not understood the procedure completely. Due to risk of the infection coming back, the hole was left, about the diameter of a quarter and went down 9 cm deep into my chest. It would stay open and we would need to take care of it until it healed from the bottom up.

I went home that day and went right to bed and slept for what seemed like forever.  My body hurt, but immediately I could tell a difference. My body no longer burned with a hot sting of infection, from the poison that was eating at me from the inside. No, it still hurt, but with a different kind of ache, I knew it was a healing kind of hurt.

For the next two months my husband carefully took care of me each day, taking out my gauze, and placing new gauze deep into my wound. The nurses at the wound center said it was vital to keep it open, because if the top started closing, they would have to reopen it.  This was something I was terrified of each day. My nightmare came true when I went for a check up with my surgeon and he decided he didn’t like how it was healing, and he pressed down hard, breaking up scar tissue with a qtip (with quite the surprise to me!).  Let’s just say I wasn’t so fond of going back to him for my next check up! 🙂

After two months, my wound had completely healed, surprising everybody with how nicely it came together.  Those four previous months were difficult, but I learned so much about my Savior, grew closer than ever to my husband and was able to be blessed by so many praying for us and helping with our newborn baby girl.

That day that I drove by the hospital though, I thought of many of these memories. I remembered standing outside the Dr office after an aspiration and feeling like I could pass out from the pain, as another fever spiked. Then I thought of after the surgery- walking in the wound center, for another cleaning and check up, nervous about being poked and cleaned. I remembered the pain of infection, but then I remembered the hope that came in the end. Before my surgery I felt hopeless. The pain was sharp, constant, and growing, and the fact that a solution hadn’t been found just crippled me emotionally. Nothing was working! However, after we had found the problem, and it was taken out, the pain seemed more bearable.

Before we come to him, we have a poison in us. It is hurting us, and suffocating us, even.

As I thought about all of this, I couldn’t help but think about what Jesus has done on the cross.  Before we come to him, we have a poison in us. It is hurting us, and suffocating us, even. The Bible says that we were once dead in our trespasses and sin (Ephesians 2:1). For a time, we try as hard as we can to figure out how to get this poison out on our own, but nothing will work- it keeps coming back. Until we realize the surgery needs to be done… Jesus had to die- it’s the only way to fix it. He died for our sins, and when we believe that- we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).  Oh, and the good news is, now we have a hope!. Now the healing can actually begin. Of course, there is still sin in this world and sin in my heart, and boy it hurts. It aches with a fury sometimes. The good news is though, the poison is out if accept what He’s done- and the pain in this world is not pointless anymore. The hurt is not an infection hurt, it is a healing hurt- it is producing something in our lives, not just destroying. We are constantly being healed, made new, and being perfected through our difficulties. Even when pain needs to happen to promote healing- our perfect Father in Heaven knows what He is doing. He is the great Healer of our hearts. The healing will take the rest of our lives, but we know the infection is finished-  and one day we will be completely healed. That is the healing that we can long for and find hope in each day as we struggle with sins that still hang on tight, and that is the hope we can share with a hurting, infected world.