It was Sunday morning and I was reaching in the car to get our our baby girl from her car seat. I paused a moment and had my left hand up on the top of the open door. The window was rolled down about two inches. My fingers curled around the space between the window and it’s seal. In that pause, my sweet husband decided to go ahead and roll up the windows before shutting off the engine. My fingers didn’t have a chance.

In the excruciating second it took to smash the ever-lovin’ life out of my fingers, it took half as long for me to pull them out and do some sort of ‘holy-mother-that-hurt!’ dance right there in the parking lot (I did not cuss. Someone give me a medal). Instinctively, my right hand grabbed the now throbbing remains of the left. I knew I had to look, but I didn’t expect to see what I saw.

Sure, we’ve all hurt our fingers in widows, but have we all had their middle finger’s nail pulled out of the nail bed and left sitting there bloody and helpless? I didn’t think so.

I ran inside and met a friend at the door who instantly turned on her inner emergency  mom and hovered over me in bathroom like a Momma over her vomiting toddler, calming me down and agreeing that yes, I did need to go the emergency room. She assured me my two young children would be fine and practically shooed me out the door.

Once at the ER, it was worse than expected. Not only was that nail on the wrong side of my skin, but that tiny little bone at the tippy-top of my middle finger was broken. BROKEN. The force of that Ford Taurus’s window was too much for my twig-like middle finger. Back to the nail. Two shots that would have numbed a rhino’s horn were injected on either side of the base of my finger. He warned me it would hurt. How kind.

Numbed up and a few minutes later, the nail was….gone. Yes, he had to take it off. (breathe people, breathe). He bandaged me up and told me to come back later to take another look at the bone. Seems that a broken bone was the least of my worries. Something about a cut nerve and the nail never growing back seemed to be what he mumbled out of his mouth. Blink.

Never mind the fact I was in a praise band and played the piano. Turns out a vocalist can have a giant bandaged middle finger and still sing. The next week while singing, I tried not to, but when I lowered my hand the throbbing would start so I had to keep it up at about stomach level. I could have just gone ahead and stuck it on up there to worship, but really, who wants to wonder if they’re being flipped off by the back up singer?

Over time, of course, it began to heal.  But, you know when you hurt something, somehow, someway you will bump it or hit it or, um, slam it in a door. Yeah. I did that. The thing about wounds is that they are vulnerable. Vulnerable to getting hurt again and again, until they are healed.  Some wounds, like my finger, stay sensitive, but never really hurt again. But it wouldn’t have healed right if I hadn’t gone to a healer.

The same is true in our emotional wounds, spirit wounds. Something happens that is excruciating in our lives and our impulse is to grab it, hold on to it and cry, not letting any one take a look to see what kind of attention it needs to be healed. We don’t tell anyone we’re bleeding. Not even God. Especially not God.

He cannot heal what we do not let Him touch.

If you grip your pain to the point it becomes a festering blob of an infection, you’ve done yourself no favors. But, if you release your grip around that which hurts so bad, hold it out to the healing love of Jesus, and give it time with Him, you will be healed. That spot will never be the same, but it won’t hurt anymore and you won’t be bound to it in a stronghold of false protection.

He loves you and wants nothing more than you bandage your wounds and heal you. It will be a great story.