Wounds

I know that almost everyone has had a hard go through Covid-19.  My mental health has been shakier this year than any year since my first bout of depression - way back in 2009 when I miscarried our first baby at 12 weeks. 

I'm a hugger. I love friends. I need space and people both. Too much socialization and I lose myself. Too much solitude and I get bogged down in my own head. 

I took another job this year because the solitude was swamping me like a heavy cloud.

I recently started meeting with a counselor on the phone, to help manage the depression. She gave me great advice, and offered helpful practices and exercises.  I'm so grateful for her listening ear and wise instructions. 

But the biggest gift in all the ache and struggle this year is when others have opened up and shared their struggles with me too. Friends and loved ones who reached out and said "I've been there." The ones with practical advice and tender understanding. "Check out this podcast," they say, "read this book that saved me from despair." The ones who don't judge. The ones who pray for me and laugh with me and hurt alongside me and assure me we'll move forward together. 

I've been spending way too much time online, and the other day I stumbled across a really cool horticulture article. It was all about grafting and growing multiple types of fruit from one tree. 

The author shared that grafting isn't terribly complicated - you just need two harmonious trees that are supple and flexible (ie, trees from the same family, such as 2 types of citrus trees). You pare a spot beneath the bark on the host tree, and pare back the bark on the other tree, and put the wounds together. You wrap them in moss and they begin to grow together - sharing nutrients and strength and becoming one tree.  And in the end, your one tree produces two types of citrus. One artist grafted 40 different fruit-producing branches onto a single tree.

And I wept when I read it because I, too, feel like a branch with open wounds. Cut off from trusting my own heart. And my friends, my sisters, have drawn close and shared their hurts with me and prayed for me. They have laid bare their griefs and battles and showed me one after another that I do not face these alone. Depression lies and it tells me that I am alone and I am lonely but my sisters say look here, me too, I am hurting too.

I may be a broken branch but they have wrapped me in moss and carried me to Jesus - Jesus, the wounded.

And while I suffer, I cannot think of it as a good thing. But the horticulturalist says that the wound - the wound is where the life flows in. The wound is where we bond. The wound is what allows a cut branch to live again. 

The wounded branch receives life from the wounded tree.

 And I think of us all, with our hurts and raw, bare places, grafted to the life-giving tree - and we are healed by his wounds, knit together. Made strong and well. He is a tree of healing for the nations, for every struggling, wounded heart. 

Don't hide your wounds from your friends. Let your loved ones carry you. Let them cry "me too," and weep and pray with you. You are not alone, my dear one. 

And if everyone around you forsakes you, you are still held. 

Jesus holds you.