Twenty-four hours removed from brain surgery, Ashlyn sleeps in her mother’s arms. She is still twitching in pain, breathing in the medication, as I watch the heart monitors flashing 184, unGodly high.
As a Father, I want to protect her! She wakes up every few minutes to look in my direction. Our eyes meet and she searches for a rescue from this pain. I gently rub her shoulders and tuck her hair behind her ears, “Shhh… it’s going be okay”. After she sobs, her breathing turns to a choppy, muffled surrender, and her eyelids close again.
The temporary pain she is going through now is only for a season. The surgical procedure will secure a deeper quality of living and a truer harmony between her mind and her body; the balance of desire and development. She will begin to walk with more ease, and her coordination will strengthen as she matures. If it were not for this [however painful] intervention, she would have succumbed to frequent falls, frustration, and physical weakness.
The cross is a stake through the heart, a painful transaction of justice and mercy. I scream out for deliverance, and my Father woos me to rest in the finished remedy. I reach for temporary medication to relieve this pain, and I wake up searching for an answer to the ever-illusive paradox. “Abba!” I scream, “Why have you abandoned me?”and he shushes me in a whisper, evidence of His immanence.The cross is a blade through the soul, a constant reminder that my old epistemological paradigms are no longer relevant. The old sacrificial system has been replaced by grace. Therefore, my scars of self-destruction have been healed by his scars of self-sacrifice. I am not who I was. I am not who I was. I am not who I was.
1 comment:
Our daughter went through 12 hours of General Anethesia, and 9.5 hours of actual surgery time on the 21st of March. We have been through the war and back a few times with her, and still are in a squirmish. I said prayers for your daughter and you all tonight. My heart goes out to you.
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