Peru as a whole is lovely, really. Sunny, breezy, good people and good food.
What's not so lovely are Peru's sand fly and mosquito populations.
Since we arrived everyone's legs and arms have been ferociously attacked by the small creatures and thus dotted, spotted, marred and adorned with red splotches and scabs, familiar sights to anyone who played outside in warm summer months as a child.
When I was a little girl, mosquitos absolutely loved me. Mom used to say it was because I'm so sweet, but I suppose that might be another story (though I don't deny such a claim). Itchy limbs were always part of my spring and summer, and even though I was instructed not to scratch them I often found it difficult to resist and ended up with the scabbed legs of any good Alabama tomboy.
Apparently, I've not outgrown that habit.
My legs currently look just like they did when I was little, almost to the point of being comical. Scabs on my feet, up my calves, on the backs of my thighs, everywhere. I've tried almost every deterrent I can think of, from wearing hydrocortisone like body lotion to making a game of the itching (e.g., "every time my leg itches, God is reminding me that He loves me"), but nothing seems to stop my nails from creeping down to my skin and wreaking havoc.
What's worse, once my scratching results in scabbing, I can't resist picking at them. Gross, I know. My 10th-grade Anatomy teacher used to emphasize the importance of allowing scabs to heal without picking them off. I remember her saying that when you take the scab off before it naturally falls away, you interrupt your body's built-in healing process, cause it to completely restart and render useless the skin that had started to regenerate.
In my quiet time yesterday I found myself picking at an injury on my hand while I meditated and recalled Ms. Gibbs' words. It shed light on an interesting spiritual parallel.
As I watched the blood begin to seep through the pale pink skin and winced a bit at the pain of picking things that weren't meant to be bothered, I thought of my recent spiritual struggles. I've felt picked apart by God, as though He's been picking at all of my spiritual scabs, wondering why it had to hurt this badly and sting so much.
It dawned on me that perhaps God is picking at my spiritual scabs in order to interrupt its current process, in order to stop the way I had been sealing up some things in my life and to allow new skin to grow that would heal more healthily in a different way. Maybe what had been growing inside of me wasn't beneficial to me and maybe, even though it's uncomfortable and causes some pain, the new skin that will grow in its place will leave me much better off in the long run.
Maybe God sees that some wounds need to be reopened or revisited or interrupted so that what's growing can be restarted and regenerated and reshaped into something more beautiful.
Maybe God sees that hurting in the present might mean healing in the long run.
It's an unrefined thought, not fully developed, but I think it's an itch worth scratching.
m
