Before one can believe such a thing I suppose there has to be an underlying trust that there is something more to life than life as we know it.
This comforts me. Because it comforts me I am confirmed that I do feel like my personal existence is greater than this moment on earth. So much feels uncertain. But I will be surprised if I die and find out I no longer exist at all. And if that's the case... that I no longer exist... then being disappointed in the fallacy of this belief is a moot point anyway.
Little things bubble up to the surface of my life journey, witnessing to the concept of eternal existence. Small, seemingly insignificant occurrences that testify. For instance, last Sunday for family dinner I was making two big pans of Chicken in a Pot, one of our favorite family recipes. One pot with onions and one without. Every other Sunday I cook for between 20 and 30 people, so I'm used to big pots. But at this moment there was too much going on at once. Bread dough was risen and ready to go in the oven at the same time as the chicken needed to be browned. One pot had already saute'd the onions. Both pots had hot butter ready to brown cleaned chicken pieces. The thing about cooking in hot butter is its less forgiving than oil. There are just a few degrees between hot enough and burnt. I noticed the back burner was too hot, so I hurried to add the cool chicken and SPLASH, the hot butter splattered up out of the pot and onto my hands, arms, neck and face. I knew immediately it was a bad one. I am very familiar with kitchen cuts and burns. I immediately turned down the burner, drenched a couple dish towels in cold water, applied them to my face and neck, filled a red solo cup with ice water and plunged my burnt fingers into it. I wrapped another cold dish towel around my wrists, held the solo cut between my uninjured thumb and forefinger while the rest of the hand dangled in the water, turned up the heat and kept cooking. In analyzing it from this end, it really isn't a sense of martyrdom that compels me to keep cooking when I'm singed or bleeding, it's just that things feel better to me to not have the attention on my tribulation. If it's so bad I think it will be permanent, I stop and get help. But I usually move forward, because my God is a miraculous God and he made my body capable of healing itself. Seriously, every single time I am injured I get an increased sense of confidence in my God, because so far he hasn't failed me. At least in the little scratches, scrapes and burns. I anticipate the following week He will manifest his power by showing me how he made me to heal.
I am always... always... stunned by the way my wrinkled old skin still heals. How bruises morph like murky sunsets in slow motion, colors becoming deeper and richer, then fading into pastels and then disappearing altogether.
Tomorrow is one week since the big burn. It was a pretty bad one this time. It hurt nearly all night. Every time I removed the cool cloths from the flesh the pain woke like a baby whose belly reminded him it was time for feeding. Libby brought down her electric icing machine at midnight. I thought, again, how blessed I am to have my sisters living steps away from me. By morning the singeing pain was mostly gone, and the blisters started rising. One large one on my neck had already burst. I treated them gently with oils and ointments that have proved themselves in the past.
At the neighborhood caucus on Tuesday night my neighbors thought maybe I had shingles because the blisters were on one side of my face and neck. Now it's Saturday. Tonight, when we went to see Annie sing in her Utah Voices Broadway Bingo concert, I was even able to put some tinted moisturizer over the wounds and you could hardly tell I was anything other than an old lady who may still be dealing with hormonal acne.
As strange as it sounds, I thank the Lord for my small wounds. They remind me that I was made to heal. My flesh was made to be renewed, almost completely on its own. It is so miraculous to me!
Even the scars are testaments. I have a scar on one of my breasts where a doctor removed a mole that may have been cancerous. I tell myself how amazing it is that I live in a place where I can see a doctor, and that I can afford one even, and that someone put themselves through so much schooling and training and 20 hour residency shifts to even know that the little brown mole could have turned into something devastating. So when I see that little scar that no one else sees, I am amazed by my God. A couple years ago I was washing the casement windows in our kitchen. In the process of trying to reach my hand out to clean the outside of the window pane I scraped my arm on the hinge. It was just a thin scrape, but because my skin is so thin it left a scab that surprisingly turned into a white scar. When the summer darkens my skin, the scar reappears, and I am reminded of that day when Dave was blowing the leaves off the back deck and the Spring air was fresh and new and I was able to wash the winter off our kitchen windows. That beautiful ordinary day is written on my forearm, a page in the story of my life. When I see this white scar above my wrist I am reminded of the beauty in ordinary.
And in the morning, when my dreams sift into reality and I feel the electricity in my lower legs and feet, I realize I must still be alive because my neuropathy is still here. If it is gone, I must not be alive, and I'm not ready yet to be not-alive. Then I immediately remind myself how grateful I am that I am able to walk on feet that hurt. I repeat my daily mantra, started years ago when my paralysis sifted into plain old electric-worm-burning-cold neuropathy... that my friend Joan, who had lost her legs in an illness would be so grateful to be able to walk on feet that hurt. I am truly grateful to be able to walk on feet that hurt.
I am grateful that, so far, my hurts have all been bearable. I have scars, and I have some measure of pain, but nothing so far has been unbearable long-term. I thank the God of Eternity for that. I trust that in the end... which, ironically, if you believe in eternity never will be the end... everything will be ok. That trust is based on my ability to believe there is a God. I thank God that I am able to believe that there even is such a thing as God in the first place. And in the second place, that he has all of us in the palm of his mighty hand.
I am a believer, and my scars are witness.
