Healing the Hurt

One of the first things everyone comments on when they see my girls are their beautiful blue-grey eyes. They are just like mine. Gideon has amazing brown eyes just like his daddy but he has my nose and ears. It's so interesting to see these little people with my features running around. Especially when they smack into a door.

Because they also inherited my grace.

We have a lot of cuts, bruises, owies and scrapes here at the Dyer house. The kids are long-legged, fearless and not that aware of the world around them leading to a lot of falling and smashing into things. Not a day goes by where I'm not sitting in front of a crying child or holding a crying child saying the same thing;

"I know it hurts. Let me see it and I'll help!"

Sometimes it's easy to coax them to look at me so that I can get a better look at a goose egg. There are a lot of times where they gingerly but fiercely guard a new hurt because they're afraid.

Don't touch it! It will hurt!

Don't look at it! I wasn't supposed to be up there!

No! I'll fix it!

Sophie is the worst. It takes a long time to convince her that I'm not going to walk away from her while her forehead bleeds through her fingers. I need to look at it and I'll probably need to clean it. It might hurt but it will be better soon. I'll be there the whole time and I'll be as gentle as I can.

Yesterday, during the sermon, I realized again that God was speaking to me through my children. Our new teaching pastor was talking about becoming a new person when we accept the gift that God has given us. That we are to put aside bitterness and put on forgiveness.

Bitterness or hurt can start small and can fester. It can become infected and eventually we almost get used to that nagging pain. When we invite the Holy Spirit in, He begins to gently pull our hands away from that hurt. He needs to see it before He can heal it. Sometimes we hold on tighter and guard our hurt. We get embarrassed because we got hurt doing something we knew was wrong.

God doesn't care about any of that. He only sees that His child is bleeding. He's not going to walk away from a hurt child any more than we would walk away from one of ours. He's going to continue gently asking us to put our hands down and let Him work. It may hurt. It may even leave a scar.

But, He will be as careful and gentle as He can be. He will be there the whole time. He will love us even if we are scarred.