“and by His wounds we are healed”

I have such great news!  Last Friday I went to the Wound Management Center at the hospital for my weekly checkup.  It was just a normal Friday morning for me, getting up really early and going to the doctor and getting back to my room right as most people around campus were waking up.  But this turned out to be my last appointment!!! I received my discharge papers and my “graduation from the wound center” certificate.    I am healed!  No more open wound!  The skin is really really thin and will take up to a year to completely thicken and be “normal.”  So I just have to continue to use gauze to protect it.  But I am so over-joyed that my wound has healed.

This has been such a long and painful process.  It has been an entire year of weekly doctor visits, sugeries, excrutiatingly painful healing processes, and major bonding between my parents and I, my doctors and I, and Cory and I.  I wouldn’t want anyone at all to go through all I’ve gone through this past year.  And I pray that I will never forget the pain, because it has truly strengthened me and encouraged me to know that I can get through anything!  I can never forget the lessons that I have learned.  I will probably never know why I have had to go through everything I did, until I am in the presence of my Lord.  But I do know that the initial reason for that first happening a year ago, was God’s way of getting my attention and teaching me to slow down and not be so busy.  If I ever begin to over commit myself, which I am so prone to do, I need to think back to this past year, and the way God taught me to slow down, to cut back on things, and not be overly committed.

I may never understand why I had to trudge through this specific valley, but I have come to appreciate and be thankful for the way God has allowed me to have an entirely new perspective on the words “by His wounds we are healed,” and “His wounds have paid our ransom.”  These phrases we so easily sing (or read in Scripture), I can no longer sing (or read) without getting completely choked up and overwhelmed.  It is truly humbling.  I have had a small taste of what it was like for Christ Jesus to have wounds, and just this small taste (that in no way comes close to comparing to what He endured) has given me a new and fresh love for Him and an entirely new and fresh outlook on what He went through.  And for that I am eternally grateful.  And because of that, I would go through it all again.

~Sarah