I enjoy picking scabs.
This is a dirty secret of mine and an unnecessary confession, but I would venture to say that I am not alone. It is my best guess that if most people were honest with themselves and with others, they too would find themselves in the dirty-scab-pickers club.
What is it about picking scabs that fascinates me so?
Perhaps it is a nervous habit. It could be a sort of self-loathing painful infliction of punishment. Could it be that it is unconscious - a Neanderthal reaction attesting to the truly animalistic nature of us mammals?
Truthfully, I think that I insist on picking at the scabs on my body because somewhere deep inside, I just can't stand that my body can fix itself without my help. I am offended with this well-working, independently-run machine in which my spirit has set up shop. How dare it function without my permission? Did I sign release papers or hand over the rights about whether or not I wanted that part of body to heal?
I suppose if it were physically possible, I would shove my hand into my chest cavity, clutch my beating heart in my fist and holler, "No, you do it like this!" It is not so far-fetched for me to believe that if my lungs were more like bellows that I would gladly take a hold of the handles and pump away, happy and contented in my self-sufficiency.
Whether I like it or not, my body does not need my help to heal itself. Day after day, year after year, cut after cut, scrape after scrape, my scabs will form and then simply sit, doing their work in the time frame that they know is best. They are not rude house-guests, staying on my body for 3 weeks longer than necessary, eating my food and watching my TV and sleeping in my bed.
No. Scabs stay only as long as they need, and then, usually without my noticing (let alone my help), they are gone. And when they do leave, they reveal soft, slightly pink, brand new skin. This skin is as new as the day I was born, untouched, unhurt, ready to brave the dangers of the world once again with a fresh perspective.
The pain in my life - the cuts and scrapes that my soul endures - heal in a similar fashion. And in a similar fashion, I insist on helping it along in an already set-in-stone process. I conjure up ways to forgive or set myself free or to forget what has happened or protect myself the next time around. I pick, pick, pick, pick away at the scabs of my heart, convinced that it will never heal without my help.
But You designed both my body and my soul in similar fashion. Neither need my assistance to heal.
In fact, the less I tamper with the scabbing wound, the faster and cleaner it will heal. A wound that is opened and reopened again and again is exposed to any and every thing that would come and infect and infest and do its damage.
If I leave it alone, if I let it go, my wounds will heal on their own, guided by Your hand down the winding path of time.
You alone know how long it takes for a heart or a mind or a body to heal. And while it frustrates me to no end that I cannot see what is going on under the cover of the scab, I know that You know what You are doing. You designed this process long ago, before I had a body or a heart to wound.
I trust You with the scabs of my life.
And I will not pick. Pinky swear.
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