He Binds Up All Their Wounds⤒🔗

My little girl, Eden, recently had her finger smashed in a door during a church social. She screamed hysterically as we gathered around her and ran cold water over the wound. I wiped her tears and spoke softly as one friend carefully applied bandages and another looked on with concern. People watched sympathetically as she left the church that night with her little wrapped finger.

We paid a great deal of attention to her injury for the first several days. She cried out in pain when she bumped it. She wailed when I removed the bandages to tend to her finger. It hurt a lot when it was exposed, because the wound was still relatively fresh. I was squeamish about changing the bandage, but I did what had to be done, because it was necessary and because I love her.

She talked to many people about that little finger, recounting the “smashing in the door” incident over and over again. It seemed to help when they would respond, “Oh, that must’ve hurt, honey.” “Uh-huh,” she’d solemnly reply.

About two and a half years ago, I felt just like that confused, crying little girl. A series of tumultuous experiences led to the painful breaking of my marriage.

The destruction of a family is devastating. It seemed that all at once I had lost my house, my husband, and my dream of a “good Christian family.” Sometimes in panic, often in shock, I stumbled through the first weeks and months alone, crying out to God for relief from the pain of rejection and loneliness.

At first the wounds were gaping and intense. For many nights I cried so hard that I would get physically sick. I was exhausted, yet I couldn’t sleep for more than three hours at a time.

I tried frantically to figure it all out - why this happened, what I did wrong, how to stop the unravelling of my life. I wondered what would become of my daughters. I wondered how I would survive financially. I wondered if my friends were sick and tired of hearing my sob story. I wondered if I was as repulsive as I felt. I hoped that it was just a bad dream and that I would wake up in my old house with all of my furniture and all of my dishes and all of my family together.

On those terrible nights when I’d finally close my swollen eyes, it felt as if God were cradling me in His arms, rocking me to sleep. His gentle embrace encompassed the hurt and created an indescribable paradox of peace and pain. It was during that tender time between wake and slumber that I felt more protected than I ever had before. He was binding up my wounds.

He also used human hands to wipe my tears and apply salve to the cuts, to compassionately stand close by, and to affirm, “Oh, that must hurt.” My church family helped to usher me through difficult circumstances in a variety of ways.

God’s People Constantly Put His Word before Me←⤒🔗

One particular friend gently reminded me of His promises and His faithfulness. She prayed with me when all I could do was cry. I once called her on the phone and said, “Please, read that Isaiah chapter to me.” These words were like medicine and eased the pain. Even now when I read Isaiah 43, I can hear her reassuring voice.

Many people simply offered quiet arms. I don’t remember much about the day I moved from our home without my husband. I do, however, clearly recall standing in the empty parlour of the house I was about to leave, weeping into the shoulder of a friend who held me as long as I needed. She offered no profound advice or appropriate Scripture. She didn’t lecture. She didn’t claim to have any answers. She was just there. She ministered to me powerfully that day without speaking a word.

Some friends would openly express their anger and indignation.

Their faith allowed them to be vulnerable in their emotions, thereby encouraging me to be vulnerable in mine.

I deeply appreciated Christians who offered me the freedom to be “just plain mad” about the whole thing - not forcing healing before its time, not expecting me to paste on a serene mask or to be at a place that I simply wasn’t. In a sense I was given permission to be genuine - in my anger and in my hurt. It was a good thing! I didn’t stay in that place ... though sometimes I go back to visit. But I am grateful for not being made to feel “less than Christian” while I was there.

Many friends set aside any squeamishness about the ugly details of divorce.

They walked with me as I made undesirable, but necessary, decisions concerning attorneys, support, and custody issues. I was grateful to have one friend accompany me to the county courthouse when I sought child support. The employees in the domestic relations department were hardened and curt (I had to speak to them through a hole in a Plexiglas window that I was too short to reach). Everyone who passed through the door was forcing a person they had once loved to support their broken family. A depressing heaviness filled the room. But my friend sat beside me in a vinyl chair, and somehow it wasn’t so bad. I believe that she was far out of her comfort zone, but she came anyway - because it was necessary, and because she loves me.

One Woman Continuously Offered Calm Assurance That All Would Be Well←⤒🔗

She asserted that God was in control, that He would take care of my children and of me, that I needed to be obedient to Him, and that there was hope. Her assurance was especially valuable since she had experienced a divorce several years ago. She revisited some of the painful circumstances of her own divorce in order to offer comfort to my hurting heart. It was encouraging to hear this peaceful woman candidly recall stories similar to my own - from the other side of the fire. Because of her willingness to share a chapter in her life that some might rather forget, she continues to minister to me in a way that no one else can.

Eden’s wound is healing now, and I haven’t heard the “smashing in the door” story for quite a while. But when I changed the bandage today, she cried again. She looked at her finger and said “It’s not bleeding anymore, but it still hurts sometimes.” “I know,” I said, “but tomorrow it will be better and the next day better still.”

God is healing the wounds of my broken marriage through his gift of time and through the people He has put into my path - God’s people who speak soft words of encouragement and comfort, who help change bandages, and who look on with compassion. They are people who listen to “smashing in the door” stories, who understand that “it’s not bleeding anymore, but it still hurts sometimes,” and who remind me that “tomorrow it will be better, and the next day better still.”

In His Hands, Broken Pieces Can Become Beautiful Mosaics←⤒🔗

When my older daughter, Sarah, was three, she received a porcelain teapot from her aunt. She felt so grownup as she poured out Kool-Aid for countless tea parties. One day a neighbour boy finally agreed to have tea with her on the front porch. Carrying the teapot, she rushed into the kitchen yelling, “Mommy! Matt said he’d have a tea party with me! We’ll have Kool-Aid and crackers and...” Crash! The teapot fell from her little hands on to the ceramic floor and splintered into a thousand pieces. She cried and cried. “Put it back together, Mommy. Please fix it.” I told her that it couldn’t be fixed. She cried some more, and I felt so sorry that I cried with her.

Everything that I held dear was lying in pieces at my feet. I thought that my marriage was protected from destruction. (We both professed to be Christians when we took our vows.) I thought that my daughters would grow up in a stable, loving family. Then it seemed to slip out of my hands, and there I was - alone in a strange home with two confused children and an utterly broken dream.

In retrospect, I know that God used the breaking of my dream so that I could love Him more passionately. But at the time, I just wanted it to be “fixed.” I tried to put things back together, but there were cracks and holes, and the glue kept coming undone. The task became increasingly confusing and frustrating. There was nothing that I could do to repair my damaged family. I asked God to take it all, to reassemble the fragments, to reconstruct my marriage. It didn’t happen. I don’t know why. I guess it is not for me to know.

Slowly, I accepted that my fragile treasure would not be repaired. It was irrevocably shattered. In time, though, an amazing thing happened (not instantly, not even consistently). The broken pieces lying at my feet started to arrange into a marvellous mosaic - fashioned by the One whose eye for beauty is far above my own. While friends have been able to help tend our wounds, the broken pieces of this family are in His hands alone - a splinter here, a fragment there, a piece of me that I had forgotten, a peace in me that I didn’t know was possible. The lights and darks, the wonderful and the mundane, the obvious and the mysterious began to mingle and create an intricate pattern that could only be possible with broken pieces. Sometimes our situation still seems like a hodgepodge of misshapen fragments. But as my perception becomes clearer, its beauty becomes apparent.

The mosaic is far from finished. There are gaps left to fill (if only I’d let Him!). There are jagged pieces I wish He would throw away and not use at all. There are sections that will not be unveiled until my daughters are grown. From time to time I try to rearrange that pieces or fit a few of my own into the picture. I am grateful that He doesn’t let me get far in these endeavours, and gently reminds me to step aside and let Him work.

The conditions aren’t very good; the materials are shoddy; He deals with a woman who keeps asking if He really knows what He’s doing. (She’s slowing up the work!) And yet He continues - patiently setting one piece at a time into place.

If an artist works with complete freedom, he can create a masterpiece. If an amateur changes the Master’s work, she ruins the entire picture. I know that a beautiful masterpiece brings honour to the Artist. More than anything, I want that.

What kind of Mercy wraps His arms around such an inept, sinful creature? What kind of Faithfulness takes pains to rearrange a situation so wrought with sin into something new? I am overwhelmed when I ponder the intensity of His love. I am quieted when I realize the power of His protection.

I don’t know what the future holds for the girls and me, and sometimes I do feel afraid. Then I recall what He has done for me over the past three years and who He has become to me through these circumstances. Then the certainty of Him permeates the fear, and I know - I just know - that He will always be faithful.