Day 4: Tended and Nurtured

Today, I dug out this little piece I wrote back in early June. Little did I know then that the words I tentatively titled "In the Hands of the Healer" would grow, months later, into something more: this very blog, which I probably wouldn't have had the courage to launch had it not been for The Nester's 31 Day Writing Challenge this October.

As it has served in my own journey through depression, I pray this place will be a healing home for others who live with wounds both hurting and healed.

May you find rest, hope, and encouragment here, dear friend, as you blossom in His healing hands.

The Gardener's Tender Care

In the Hands of the Healer

 

You are my ever-present, ever-loving Gardener, Lord.

Tending me.

Nurturing me.

Training me up to where I need to go.

 

Your love is gentle and kind.

When You need to do the difficult pruning in my life--

Cutting out parts of me and

Allowing me to know hurt and brokenness and emptiness--

It’s because You can see what I cannot see.

 

All those things I have clung to for so long,

The hidden wounds I nurse,

You know them for what they are:

Disease, sin, death.

 

Like a sharp pair of pruners

You cut to the quick,

Convicting me cleanly of whatever might stunt my growth or threaten my life.

You give me the courage to yield.

Then You orchestrate the work,

Giving me the tools and leading me each step of the way.

There is nothing You ask me to do that You don’t equip me for.

And when the dead wood is exposed and cut away,

You carry it to the burn-heap Yourself.

Surgery over, You keep constant vigil at my bedside,

Championing my recovery.
 

In my weakness Your strength is like rebar,

Straightening my spine and lifting my face up to You.

My worldly props gone, my crutches burned to ash,

You hold me up

Until I’m able to withstand the winds and storms of this life,

Firmly planted and rooted in Your Word.

 

Then You take away the stake like You rolled away the stone:

I am fully alive.

Whole.

Healed.

Free to bear You fruit.

 

And when my time is up

(Only You know when that is),

You will gather me up in Your loving hands--

Spent blooms, decayed leaves and all--

And carry me home to the Garden,

Forever to be with You.
 

Amen.

 

 

~ Linking up with Five Minute Friday

(with apologies that, between June drafting and October revisiting, it is over the five-minute limit, but still I share it in the spirit of this week's thought-provoking topic, "Write," as well as out of gratitude for an earlier Friday prompt that got me writing again on this subject at long last)