Hidden Thorns

This year on our annual dove hunt in George West—a trip my husband and I take every September with my brother-in-law Kit and his wife Marsha—I had no idea God was going to teach me a lesson out in the sunflower fields.

On our last hunt, I shot a dove that fell out in the middle of a dry sunflower patch. The field had once been planted with cotton, and after the cotton was turned under and planted with sunflowers for dove season, a single cotton plant had volunteered and sprouted anew right in the center of the row. As I walked down that row searching for my dove, I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I walked straight into it. One of those hard, dried cotton pods cut deep into the side of my right calf.

We didn’t want to interrupt the hunt, so instead of urgent care, we did what hunters do—we used what we had. We wet a cloth, taped it up with duct tape, and kept hunting.

For the next 2½ months I tended the wound faithfully. Warm soaks, antibiotic cream, bandages. The whole thing healed except for one tiny spot, about half the size of a dime, that just wouldn’t get well. It throbbed, it bled, and every now and then it felt like something sharp was still buried inside.

This morning, while tending it again, I couldn’t believe what happened. The tip of a dried cotton pod pushed its way out. Almost half an inch long, it was buried deep the entire time.

As soon as I saw it, the Lord spoke to my heart.

Sometimes the very same thing happens with the wounds in our lives. We patch, we cover, we avoid. We say we’re fine, but something keeps poking at us from the inside—a hurt, a memory, a resentment, a fear. No amount of bandaging will fix what needs to be identified, acknowledged, and brought into the open. It must be eradicated for healing to really begin.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart… see if there is any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” — Psalm 139:23–24

There are some things in our lives we simply cannot patch over. True healing only starts when we let God reach the deep places and remove what’s been hurting us all along.