My currently covered wound: underneath is my purple plug.
Spoiler alert: My wound is not healed and I might mention blood.
This post is not about scars and it’s not about surgery. It’s not about a dozen metaphors that raced to mind for very real emotional and spiritual wounds. It’s not about how sometimes our good God wounds, or even about his rich wounds.
It’s not about those.
It’s about two thing that my gaping abdominal wound is teaching me about about how wounds heal.
Blood Heals Wounds
The law says that almost everything must be made clean by blood, and sins cannot be forgiven without blood to show death.
Hebrews 9:22, ESV
Four weeks post-op, the inch-long, quarter-inch wide scab fell off. Then I saw the truth. My wound was far from healed. It was a fleshy, red, nickel-sized mess.
But my wound-care specialist assures me: “Red is good. It means healthy tissue.” The life is in the blood. So rubbing Q-tips inside my wound and bringing them out bright red is good. Because, she said, “The blood cleans the wound.”
Healed From Inside Out
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
Jeremiah 6:14, ESV
I am also learning that wounds heal from the inside out. For that reason, puncture wounds shouldn’t scab over too soon. Mine did. I’m told that that hard cap kept oxygen from doing its healing work.
But I didn’t know. Beneath the surgical glue, that hard, wide scab looked great all month. To my untrained eye, it looked like a perfectly healing wound.
When I told a nurse friend this week about my Hydrofera Blue wound dressing—AKA: “my purple plug”— she nodded knowingly. “It healed too fast. Life a half-baked cake.”
A Half-Baked Cake
The people of Israel mingle with godless foreigners, making themselves as worthless as a half-baked cake!
Hosea 7:8, NLT
Like Hosea’s cake unturned, a half-baked pancake. That’s how God’s word picture for the sinful character of his people, Israel. They were clueless. They were “overexposed to bad things, and underexposed to God.”
That is my wound. Cooked on top, doughy and raw on the inside. Mine was a superficial healing. Which is to say, no healing at all.
I want to launch off on the other ten spiritual wounding and healing tangents right about now. I won’t. I’m committed to being mercifully short.
Do you have “lightly healed” wounds—scabbed over scars that hide gaping holes? Do you have deep wounds that need the cleansing blood?
Slow And Sure
I’m learning that deep wounds close slowly. Slowly, I’m learning life-giving truths about wounds.
I’m learning that superficial healing is not healing. That the outside can smooth and dry while the inside cries. That tender, itchy skin, not thick, hard scabs indicate healing. I’m learning, afresh, that blood cleanses and heals, even deep wounds.
Slow and sure, we will heal. I’m learning.
In our dealings with God let us…ask that He will not spare us, or give us anything less than the best.
The process may be painful and protracted, but it will be sure.
Click here for the “Keep On“ podcast of this post.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
Philippians 3:8a
If I’d Have Known
If you would have told me 10 years ago that this is where I’d be, I think I would have collapsed in a heap.
If you would have told me, as I gazed down at the beautiful rosy-cheeked, long-lashed baby feeding from me, that this child would be the first and last from my womb, I’d have wept.
If I had known how the sought-out son who came from God on a plane and wowed us with his memory and wit and thrilled us with his skillful hands would have this years-long fallow season, I’d have cried.
If I had known that the speaking gigs with the book deal, the bright, sunny home on the prairie, and the Sunday dinners with missionaries were mostly fantasy, I’d have crumbled.
I would have. But I’m not. Because my non-coddling, loves-me-to-the-end God is with me and in me and for me. So please know that I’m not looking for sympathy, nor, at least as I write, in a funk of self-pity.
I’m actually rejoicing.
I know that sounds a little crazy. But it’s not.
At least not once we start to count right.
Re-Learning To Count Loss
How can you possibly count the loss of a child, the death of a dream, the loss of wealth as gain?
Great question. That is why I’m writing. I want to show you the right way for a Christian to count. Let me hasten to add, I am learning to count. Learning. Sometimes I still count the old way. I count loss as loss, not as gain.
But Apostle Paul is teaching me. The syllabus is his life, condensed into a few verses in Philippians, chapter 3:
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him…
I bolded so you would notice how Paul is counting. He just finished recounting the things in his life that had given him purpose and meaning—his Jewish heritage, moral excellence and religious upper-crustness, for three. Then comes verse 7, quoted above, “But whatever things were gain to me…”
So what exactly is this new, right way to count?
Count, Consider, Think
First, we’ve got to know that in the Bible, counting means much more than simply numbering. It means considering and reckoning. Turns out, it’s an accountant’s term for balancing the books.
When James wrote, Count it all joy when you face trials of all kinds (James 1:2), Peter wrote, Count the patience of our Lord as salvation (2 Peter 3:15), and when Paul wrote, I count all things as loss (Philippians 3:8), they all used the same Greek word, hēgeomai.
The word can mean to deem or consider—to account, suppose, or think. To think. Christian growth demands we think rightly. We must train ourselves to frame the circumstances we face biblically. We must discipline our minds to think, to consider and count certain things as loss and a certain thing as gain.
In other words, we need to build new associations in our minds. Here’s a fitness example.
Retrain Your Brain to Reframe the Pain
We need to know that there is good pain and there is bad pain. To grow strong in our faith we must be able to differentiate between the two.
After decades of regular exercise, I have trained my brain to actually crave a certain kind of pain. After I do a squat and lunge workout, I want to feel sore. When I lift weights, I want my muscles to quiver. After 40 real push-ups, I want my biceps to sting.
When I train for a marathon, I want to feel the sore legs and lung burn that come from a fast(-ish) 10 mile run. If I get a cramp in my side, I don’t panic—I run through. In fact, if I don’t hurt, I’m not getting my money’s worth.
Over the years, I have trained my brain to know that these are good pains. They are pains I associate with endurance, speed and strength. You could say I’ve learned to connect this sort of “suffering” with growth.
Therefore, I welcome the pain. I don’t count it loss, but gain.
Build Up Useful Associations
Now let’s go beyond the realm of exercise. I love this bit from Oswald Chambers about making associations.
We have to build up useful associations in our minds, to learn to associate things for ourselves, and it can only be done by determination. For instance, learn to associate the chair you sit on with nothing else but study: associate a selected secret place with nothing but prayer […] If we learn to associate ideas that are worthy of God with all that happens […] our imagination will never be at the mercy of our impulses.
When we become accustomed to connecting things, every ordinary occurrence will serve to fructify our minds in godly thinking because we have developed our minds along the lines laid down by the Spirit of God. It is not done once for always; it is only done always. Never imagine that the difficulty of doing these things belongs peculiarly to you, it belongs to everyone. The character of a person is nothing more than the habitual form of his associations
The Moral Foundations for Life
Don’t you love that? Even more than the word fructify, I love the idea that Chambers normalizes this mental training. It’s done always, for all believers who want to count right. When we learn to build useful associations, “our imagination will never be at the mercy of our impulses.” In the context of Philippians 3, that means that rather than wallow in self-pity’s mire when our life isn’t the life of our dreams, we press on to know Christ.
We look to him for comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3) and healing for our broken hearts (Psalm 147:3). In other words, we learn to associate our losses with deeper intimacy with Christ.
And that is gain.
The Intimacy Factor Prepares Us For Loss
In a message on Philippians 3, Pastor John Piper calls this “the intimacy factor.” When the saints suffer in faith, their relationship with God becomes less formal and distant, and more personal and deep. At least if they count right.
Becoming a Christian means discovering that Christ is a Treasure Chest of holy joy and writing “LOSS” over everything else in the world in order to gain him. “He sold all that he had to buy that field.” (Matthew 13:44).
Then Piper asks, Why is writing “LOSS” across everything in your life but Christ a way of preparing to suffer?
His answer? “Suffering is nothing more than the taking away of bad things or good things that the world offers for our enjoyment—reputation, esteem among peers, job, money, spouse, sexual life, children, friends, health, strength, sight, hearing, success, etc. When these things are taken away (by force or by circumstance or by choice), we suffer.”
But if we’ve been learning from Paul, we are already counting our losses as gaining fellowship with Christ. This prepares us for life’s inevitable suffering and loss.
4 Ways to Count Loss as Gain
These four guidelines from Pastor John have been so helpful to me.
It means that whenever I am called upon to choose between anything in this world and Christ, I choose Christ.
It means that I will deal with the things of this world in ways that draw me nearer to Christ so that I gain more of Christ and enjoy more of him by the way I use the world.
It means that I will always deal with the things of this world in ways that show that they are not my treasure, but rather show that Christ is my treasure.
It means that if I lose any or all the things this world can offer, I will not lose my joy or my treasure or my life, because Christ is all.
That is what it means in practical terms to count all things loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. When my mama dreams, and wifely hopes, when my author aspirations and fall away, or are delayed, I’m learning to rejoice.
Because in their void Jesus Christ, the treasure that will never rust, fail or fall away. But that doesn’t mean we don’t grieve. Jesus wept. He sweated blood in Gethsemane.
But we grieve with a measure of hope. We cry with a twinge of joy. Jesus rose from the grave and he meets us in our loss and pain.
What’s Up With The Balloon?
We’ve seen that suffering is losing what gives us pleasure. Losing these things, even these relationships and people, is a very real loss. But when we learn to count them right, we gain. We gain freedom to be content whatever the circumstances.
Now, about that balloon up top. What in the world does a hot air balloon have to do with counting right?
It’s my visual for loss and gain. The ropes that tether the balloon represent earthly enjoyments my heart gets set on. Each rope released is a loss of a pleasure—a child, a spouse, my health or a dream.
But the ropes released are also gain. Because their release frees me to soar heaven-high.
I’m starting to make helpful, “fructifying” associations, to reframe the pain of loss, and to taste the sweetness of knowing Jesus Christ better as the ruins fall.
In sum, I’m learning how to count loss right.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
It has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. G.K. Chesterton wrote that about “the Christian ideal.” But it’s just as true of Paul’s treatment for anxiety.
In other words, we can be freed from anxiety. Moment by moment, hour by hour, if we are willing to exert and apply and fight the good fight (1 Timothy 6:12), we can live in perfect peace (Isaiah 26:3).
But you don’t get me, Abigail. I have serious anxiety. I’m a worrier. It’s in my DNA.
Exactly. I am writing to you. Paul has written to you. His Philippians 4 treatment is just what we need.
I Was A Worrier Too
The tendency to worry and fret is deep in me. In seventh grade, social anxiety was so crippling that I missed my best friend Jill’s birthday party. Junior high upset my stomach so much I tucked a Ziplock in my backpack for fear I’d be sick on the bus.
I’m not immune.
If anyone has cause for worry, I have more. Circumstanced to breaking point, of the people of Worriers, of the tribe of Wustmann; in regard to personality, a Type-A; as for plans, lists overflowing; as for hyper-sensitivity to hurt feelings, faultless.
But whatever was cause for worry, I’m learning to count as fuel for faith.
What I wrote that hard times preparing me to “race with horses” is more true now than when I wrote it months ago. Stressors are ramping up not gearing down.
I share this to gain credibility not sympathy. Because I want you to know that I’ve got lots at home that could make me a nervous wreck. I’ve drawn this out so you believe me when I say that you can be free from anxiety. Paul’s peace pill works.
And we’d do well to take it.
Just A Little Worry? Or Infidelity?
Because when we are worrying, we are not trusting, Corrie ten Boom wrote.
Because, it is not only wrong to worry, Oswald Chambers said, it is infidelity, because worrying means that we do not think that God can look after the practical details of our lives.
The prescription for our anxious hearts is found in Philippians chapter 4.
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
NIV, bolding mine
I know this treatment works.
An Effective Prescription For Peace
Here are three reasons I know.
Because God never lies (Titus 1:2). He promised his peace will replace our anxiety if we take the Philippians 4 treatment.
Because I’ve experienced the cure. When an angry barrage came at 11 pm last night, I took the treatment and fell fast asleep.
Here’s how it looked today. A loved one made an unwise choice that will likely crimp his future and impact ours, a pang of fear shot through. My insides twisted from chest to waist. Then I took Paul’s peace pill.
Lord God, please take my worry. I give it to you. Thank you that you’re way ahead of us, working a solution before I even saw the problem.
Then I did part two: the “think on these things” part. I called to mind true, right, lovely things. As I did, peace trumped. It pushed out anxiety.
I won’t lie. I had to do it again and again this afternoon. But each time I did, it worked.
Effective anxiety treatment is within your reach. You can be an A-Thrower, too.
Insist Upon Thinking
But peace requires right thinking—thinking the way God calls us to think on the things God calls us to think. That is how the peace of God calms our anxious hearts.
In his message on Matthew 6:25-34, where Jesus gave 8 reasons not to be anxious, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones zoomed in on reasons #2 and #4, “Look at the birds,” and “Consider the lilies.”
Faith, according to our Lord’s teaching in this paragraph, is primarily thinking. And the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. That is the real difficulty in life, life comes to us with a club in its hand and strikes us upon the head, and we become incapable of thought, helpless and defeated.
The way to avoid that, according to our Lord, is to think. We must spend more time in studying our Lord’s lessons, in observation and deduction. Look at the birds, think about them, and draw your deductions. Look at the grass, look at the lilies of the field, consider them.
The trouble with most people, however, is that they will not. Instead of doing this, they sit down and ask: ‘What is going to happen to me? What can I do?’. That is the absence of thought, it is surrender, it is defeat. Our Lord here is urging us to think and to think in a Christian manner, and that is the very essence of faith.
Faith, if you like, can be defined like this: it is a man insisting upon thinking when everything seems determined to bludgeon and knock him down in an intellectual sense. The trouble with the person of little faith is that instead of controlling his own thought, his thought is being controlled by something else – and he goes round and round in circles – that is the essence of worry, that is not thought, that is the absence of thought, the failure to think.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
We must not allow circumstances to bludgeon us. We must think. This is faith.
Because there’s a whole lot we could worry about. We could worry about Putin, the Ukraine, and the U.S. for three. We could worry about unhealthy choices our loved ones are making. There’s always fear of being misunderstood, mistreated or mistaken.
But by now you know, there is a way out of worry. But it’s not an easy way. Peacemaking is not passive, and rarely comes free. One gave all and all, who-would-be-anxious-for-nothing, must give something.
Peacemaking is not passive, and rarely comes free.
Peace with God came through Jesus Christ’s death on a cross. Christ gave himself up for us.
Peace within also comes at a cost. We must offer something up to God.
Anxiety Can’t Coexist With Thanksgiving
Back to Philippians 4 verses 6 and 7, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Did you see it? We offer up our prayers, with what Psalm 116:17 calls, “a sacrifice of thanksgiving.” Then, when human reason cannot figure how this can work out well, the peace of God glides in.
It guards us from the dread enemy of anxiety that would kill joy and steal peace.
Note, some anxieties can resist everything except thanksgiving. English preacher J.H. Jowett explains,
When thanksgiving begins, anxieties melt away like icebergs in tropical seas. The life that is ungrateful is very cold and icebergs abound. Let us raise the temperature and we shall be amazed at the results. A really thankful heart is so crowded with the sense of God’s mercies that it can offer no hospitality to worry and care.
This too, I know from experience. When I turn up the heat with thanksgiving, my worry melts away. Thanksgiving trumps anxiety. I simply cannot be anxious and thankful at the same moment. I can’t ride two horses with one heinie. Remember, even if you don’t feel thankful, youcan give thanks.
Because that’s how contentment comes. That’s the cost for inner peace.
But there’s more, in Philippians 4 verses 8 and 9. We’ve got to think on good things, true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable things. (I made this printable to help us do just that!) Then we’ve got to practice good things. When we do, Paul makes the promise: The God of peace will be with you.
Does the dread enemy of anxiety really stand a chance when the peace of God Almighty guards our hearts and the God of peace is with us?
Why Don’t We Take Peace Pill?
So why don’t we pay the price for worry-free?
First, maybe feeling anxious makes us feel like we’ve got a horse in the race. Corrie ten Boom said, “We imagine that a little anxiety and worry are indications of how wise we are. We think we see the dangers of life clearly.” As if our worry could change the outcome, as if anxiety makes us boss.
But the other reason is real, at least to me. It’s not one and done. The anxiety-peace trade must be made again and again. I may have to pray my anxious thoughts to God with thanks 20 times an hour.
Anxiety comes easy. Peace takes work.
But we block of the power of God’s promises (2 Peter 1:3-4) when we erect clinical barriers around anxiety. We make our troubles untouchable.
David must have faced anxiety when he was behind enemy walls, seized by hostile Philistines. A thousand years before Dr. Paul wrote the anxiety script, David took the peace pill and penned Psalm 56.
Keep on trusting, keep on thanking, keep on thinking. Give peace a chance.
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?
Psalm 56:3-4
Postscript:
Some of you are still shaking your head. “You don’t understand. My anxiety is way beyond what you know.” To you I say, “Maybe it is. But please go to God (Hebrews 4:16). He knows.” Relief from anxiety may involve more than the Philippians 4 script, but it will not require less.
I am a mess of unfinished business. I feel pangs of “in process-ness” every single day. Not that I have attained or been made perfect, Paul said. But if there is anything true, lovely or admirable about me, odds are it was shaped by my friends.
The truth is, I wouldn’t be me without my friends.
God Grows Us Through Our Friends
But spiritually, as physically, we can’t usually see growth happen. Discouraged, we ask: God, how are you working in me?
If you’ve ever wondered about how exactly God does work in you, here’s a great answer.
…[It] is rather like the woman in the first war who said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast. If there is no bread there will be no toast. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of ways […] But above all, He works on us through each other…
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Chapter 7
God works in us through our friends.
Our Friends, God’s Grace
God uses their hugs to love and heal us, their words to convict and encourage us. God transforms us through our friends. Christian friendships are a means of grace.
If the phrase “means of grace” is new to you, it refers to the ways in which the Holy Spirit works in our lives to make us more like Christ. We can think of them as “channels through which God’s love and power flow” to his people. Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments are means of grace.
But Christian friendship is too. Friends are a massive means of God’s grace to us—his transforming, often uncomfortable, grace.
Smoothing And Honing
A few months ago, a friend asked me if I saw any “blind spots” in her. That question is not for the faint of heart. But if she could do it, I could too. So I asked her the same. What she said is another post and I’m not suggesting that you ask.
But I do hope that you have friends close enough to smooth your rough spots and to hone your dull edges. Because we all have those.
Good friends shape us as iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17) and as sandpaper rubs wood (“walking with the wise,” Proverbs 13:20). The second process is more gradual and gentle. It throws fewer sparks.
But both are needful. The sanding that comes naturally from walking together is as necessary for our spiritual growth as trusted wounds from a friend (Proverbs 27:5-6).
What Friends Sharpen You?
Author and blogger Tim Challies couldn’t be more clear about why we need iron-sharpens-iron friends.
You need spiritual friendships for the sake of your soul; a sinful person who can hold tight to your depravity. You are a weak-eyed person who often cannot see yourself as you are; a selfish person who sometimes struggles to live for anyone or anything apart from yourself. And you need friends who will help you, serve you, strengthen you, equip you. You need friends to temper your weakness, to challenge your sinfulness, to comfort your sorrows, to speak truth into your tragedies.
I am a weak-eyed person who cannot see myself as I am. I need friends. You needs friends.
So who sharpens you? Who is sharpened by you?
What Friends Rub Off On You?
While iron sharpening iron implies a focus and directness that might hurt, sandpaper relationships need not rub us wrong. I think of these type of friendships as those that shape us in less direct, edge-of-blade sort of ways.
Here’s a short list of some sandpapery friends. Not that they’ve never been iron-sharpening friends, but they come to mind now less for their words and more for their rub-off influence.
They are soft-spoken friends like Traci and Brooke who help me to speak more gently and huge-hearted friends like Julia and Chrissy who make me want to give. They are self-controlled friends like Hannah and Mary who help me skip second dessert and hospitable friends like Christin and Jen who make me open to host. Ginny and Donna’s prayers spur me to be faithful in prayer, Sarah and Sandra’s pure hearts show me dirt in mine, and Shari and Myrt’s art help me see beauty. Then there’s my good friend mom.
This list could go on and on. God must give me so many good friends because there are so many prickly sides of me.
We all have those sides. So what friends are rubbing off your rough sides and rubbing off of you?
The Best Friendship In The World
Michael Haykin’s Iron Sharpens Iron is a short book about great friendships. I haven’t read it yet, but I intend to. (Any friends out there who’d like to read it with me? 😄 ) My gratitude to Tim Challies for his book review.
This excerpt is from John Ryland’s sermon at the funeral of his friend Andrew Fuller. Their friendship, Ryland said, had
never met with one minute’s interruption by any one unkind word or thought, of which I have any knowledge. I never had a friend who was so willing to stand by me, even in such services as most others would wish to decline; yet I never had a friend who would more faithfully, freely, and affectionately give me warning or reproof, if ever it appeared necessary; or whom I could more readily and freely, and without the least apprehension of giving offence, tell of any fault which I imagined I could see in him. And this I think is the best friendship in the world.
For no man is faultless; and true friendship will not be blind to the failings of those we love best; but will rather show itself in an anxious concern to prevent the least appearance of evil in them, or whatever might occasion their good intentions to be misrepresented. […]This most faithful and judicious friend is taken from me, and never will my loss be repaired upon earth!
I’ve been reflecting on that description all week.
It is exquisite because it tells how iron and sandpaper meld. Fuller was a friend who both stood by and warned. He faithfully and affectionately warned, Ryland said, and was so willing to stand by me.
And this I think is the best friendship in the world.
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.
Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
