11/15/19 - What My Daughter’s Broken Arm Taught Me About Healing

11/15/19 - What My Daughter’s Broken Arm Taught Me About Healing

Today is November 15^th, a day when my husband and I should be celebrating our son’s third birthday but instead our baby is celebrating in Heaven. We are still on this side of Heaven waiting for God’s restoration of this broken world. Three years of ups and downs have taken us through the hard road of loss. I will admit that in many ways I am far from the place that I started in, and that is entirely by God’s gracious and healing hand. God has given me a greater understanding of what healing looks like and recently He showed me an important lesson about healing.


My two year old broke her arm this summer diving off the side of a slide. Why, you ask? Her five year old sister was at the bottom of the slide trying to catch her. Can you say stubborn?  The x-ray revealed that both bones in her right forearm were broken. We were assured the next day at her orthopedist appointment that toddlers heal much faster than adults and that she would be out of a cast in three to four weeks. That was glorious news to us since this incident occurred in the middle of the summer when all our girls wanted to do was swim in our pool.  We remained hopeful that after a month she would be able to take part in all of the fun water activities. (We had also gotten her a unicorn water table for her birthday which was 6 weeks away so it would be great to be able to use that, for goodness sake! And no, they wouldn’t give us a water-proof cast because she was too little for one.)


After 4 weeks in a cast, we visited the orthopedist again. We were told that her arm was in the healing process but was not completed yet. One of the bones was healed, but the other remained cracked at an angle which meant a cast for 3 more weeks. Ugh…cue a visit to Wendy’s restaurant for lunch to ease the disappointment!


Three weeks later, we saw another orthopedist who showed me her latest x-rays. In one position, the bones looked healed. In the other position, the bones were healing at an angle. Her bone had healed and was continuing to grow new bone around the area. The crack that had once been there had morphed into a triangle-shaped peak that had filled in the bone inside. It was thicker, larger, and stronger than it had been before it was broken, albeit a bit curved which they said would eventually heal in a year or so. (I would also like to add that the first thing we did after getting her cast off was go swimming in our pool. This was just a few days before her birthday so that she could enjoy her new unicorn water table.)


What I realized in the midst of this ordeal was that the healing process of loss is not always as you expect or anticipate it will be. Sometimes it is like my daughter’s broken bone. I expected it would heal faster. I thought it would heal to look as it had previously looked. I assumed it would heal in a straight line. I thought her arm would be “perfect” again. But God chose to heal it differently than I imagined. What God taught me was that even if it heals in a different position or a different way than I anticipated, God can make it stronger than it was because my God can literally do anything.


In a similar way, Jesus Christ asked God if He would heal His broken world another way than the cross. This is basis of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  In Matthew 26:39b, Jesus prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” We know that His Father said no and that Jesus would have to endure the suffering of the cross in order to reconcile the relationship between God and the world. But Jesus still prayed this prayer knowing that He would have to submit to His Father regardless of the answer...and He probably already knew the answer before He spoke the prayer. He had already planned to obey, submit, be humble to God's plan through suffering, sadness, rejection, and pain with which no one else can even fathom or sympathize. 


Our story of sin in the Garden of Eden and all of the brokenness that resulted was redeemed by Jesus Christ after this prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. The entire world went from being CURSED in Eden to BLESSED on the cross. If the world had never become broken, even though our sin tore God’s heart apart, we would never know God’s amazing power of forgiveness, love, and redemption. I am not trying to downplay the pain and heartache that God and Jesus endured. I am merely stating that God can take something that is so broken and so beyond repair and make it stronger than it could ever have been if it had never been broken.  

So what does my idea of “perfect” look like in comparison to God’s idea of “perfect”? Maybe…just maybe…God’s idea of “perfect” is His healing work in your brokenness which will make the blessings on the other side (even if that means waiting until Heaven) even more sweet and glorious. And maybe God can make you stronger than you previously were if you had never been broken. What could be more perfect than Jesus Christ dying for our sins on the cross? Yet it did not feel perfect physically to Jesus, but spiritually, He knew the wonderful, perfect blessings that stood on the other side of this pain in Heaven. Isaiah 53:5 states: “He (Jesus) was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”

 


Wishing the brokenness away would likewise wish away the amazing healing act that God has done. This is the power of the cross – a painful portrait of Jesus’ brokenness for the healing of a sinner like me. And let’s not forget that the best part of Jesus’ death was when He rose again three days later. In the same way, I wouldn’t wish away my little boy in Heaven and the hope of seeing him someday for anything. 

Happy 3^rd Birthday, Kenneth John!