The Knife and the Bandage

It happens all the time.  A patient comes in hurting.  It started as just a little soreness, but it grew and grew, with more and more pus building up.  Now it has become a constant pain, hidden under the surface, bothering them 24/7.  It starts interfering with their life, and soon they find that they can’t do what they need to do or other things they would enjoy without misery.  Sometimes, out of nowhere, the pain will bring them to their knees.

Often, they want a medicine that will just dull the pain, or they are convinced that there’s a pill that can clear up all the pus.  But I always have to tell them that it has to be lanced, that the pus has to escape from the body.  It’s painful, but it’s necessary.  There is no other way but the knife. 

But I also warn them that once the wound has been opened and drained, they can’t keep digging around in it, or it will never fully heal.  They have to bandage it, and when they’re tempted to scratch, they need to just look down at the bandage and remind themselves that the pus is gone.

That’s just what has to be done with boils.  But that’s also a picture of what has to be done with wounds of the soul.  All of us get them— it might be something that happened decades ago or just last week, but it has slowly grown and become more and more painful.  The pressure of the poison of hurt forces its way into every part of life.  It starts interfering with our jobs, our relationships, our joys. Sometimes it brings us to our knees in pain.

The cure is not a pill, but plunging the knife in, opening up the wound, and letting the pus out.  It’s painful, very painful, and not easy. Sometimes it takes a flood of tears in the arms of a friend, sometimes it takes the agonized strokes of a pen in a journal, and sometimes it takes pouring your heart out to God in the wee hours of the morning.  Often it needs to be all three.  Ignore the wound, keep the pain bottled up, just take a pill to dull it, and it will only get worse.  If you aren’t honest with yourself and honest with God and let the pus out, your soul will never heal from the hurt.

But the flip side is just as important: once the pus has drained out, you can’t keep digging at the wound.  It’s time to let go and move on.  Put a bandage on your soul and say, “Yes, that’s where I let out the pain of that hurt.  That’s done.  I don’t need to return there again. God is healing me. I can go on.”

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