I see a bird in my bruise…
I thought to myself as I sat outside my hostel room, sharing mutual yet separately inspired heartache with a dear friend. Thousands of miles and an ocean separated us, yet emotionally we were in the same place. Dreams had been dashed and thrown from the sky to the cold, hard ground. Mine happened first, but the last time we talked weeks before, his was ominously looming on the horizon. I opened up how God seemed to be silent and I wasn’t completely sure why. I’m sure the bitterness that had lodged its nasty roots into my heart was part of the block, as well as the shame. I had been crying out to Jesus to remove it and help me heal and to simply just SPEAK, but up to that moment, to no avail. My soul was tired and heavy, downcast like an anchor in a sea of pain. I felt like I had come to just float in the ocean, treading water with my head above the water. No longer moving forward, like I remembered two months ago. Oddly enough, (but actually not) talking to another in pain helped to snap me out of my despairing daydream, the trap of my mind. I listened to his heartache. I momentarily felt useless. But then I remembered that I could still pray. My knees were huddled up to my chest, a posture of comfort and familiarity in the midst of an emotional storm.
And then I saw it. The familiar purple mark on my knee had taken on a new form. I couldn’t remember what caused it, but it was there one day, tender to the touch. It was healing, most of the pain now gone. But many of the ruptured blood vessels were still a deep purple. Now they formed a shape; the shape of a bird, more precisely, a dove flying. I laughed to myself in amazed amusement, almost on the verge of disbelief. Jesus was speaking to me through a bruised knee. I had been crying out for a word in my pain.
The joyful irony of it all! He had taken my place of pain (most likely self-inflicted due to my clumsiness and inability to walk properly) and turned it into something beautiful.
A sign of hope.
Keep flying Songbird. My Holy Spirit is found in the midst of your pain. I take your wounds and transform them.
Jesus spoke in my pain…
