His designated-driver buddy got out of the car first, and joked that my husband “thought” he was coherent, but it sounds like the sedation clearly offered our friend some early-morning entertainment.
Then my husband stepped out of the car. More slowly, and less
confidently than usual. With only one eye offering cloudy vision at best, he
chuckled as he emerged and half-jokingly said, “I can’t find you.”
And I said, “That’s all right. I’ll find you.”
And I said, “That’s all right. I’ll find you.”
We embraced, I thanked our friend for getting up at the crack of dawn to go with my husband [since my health hasn’t allowed me to do that], and we made our way inside the house.
~ ~ ~
When we face trauma, even if it happens to be something we choose, don’t we attempt to manage our pain the same way my husband’s doctors did? We tackle it with pain killers from every angle, right? Locally and systemically. We anesthetize the point of pain with a numbness so potent we’ve ensured a total loss of all sensation. And when the world offers valium promises to make sure we don’t even know we’re hurting, all logic convinces us to accept.
Just give me anything to make me not feel the pain.
As counterfeit comfort flows through our veins, it creates a false sense of reality, our entire system unaware of our gaping gash. Even giddy in the midst of it. (By the way, the side effects of the valium? It compromised his digestion – his body rejecting an essential for survival.)
Between the trauma, itself, and the side effects of our synthetic, self-prescribed coping counter-measures, our souls are crippled. Our thinking seems rational, but when we’re only seeing out of one eye, we perceive the world partially blinded. Our vision gets cloudy, and our equilibrium gets off kilter because we’ve lost our center of gravity.
Sure, on the outside, we look fine. We smile, crack a joke, and keep our incisions concealed under sterile white gauze. Because after all, exposure makes wounds vulnerable, prone to infection. And just like when my husband first stepped out of the car, we get so disoriented in life that we have a hard time focusing, and finding God in the midst of it all.
Yet with floods of grace, our tender Father looks past all our desperate attempts to find comfort everywhere but in Him, and sees our soul countenance with full clarity.
He knows the raw wounds that seep below all the gauze.
And He wants you to know,
“It’s all right. I’ll find you.”
"Israel, out looking for a place to rest,
met God out looking for them!"
(Jeremiah 31:3)
Image courtesy of Todd White
