This is a blessing for those who
felt control and consciousness slip.
Who wrestled down the instinctive urge
to curl up around
their dissipating “before.”
Who were pulled—
like a ship out of harbour—
into a euphoric sea, that
first, welcomed them
then, overtook them
and finally, gave their vessel over
to another.
Beneath that dreamless haze
the scalpel slid across defenseless skin
with careful calculated cuts.
When they awoke—
swollen, bruised, disoriented—
betrayed?
Nauseating pain stirred suspicion.
Because they resembled nothing
like the healing that was promised.
And so,
they took the pills
they slept
they gripped tightly every offered hand
that reassured
the scalpel cuts to cure.
This was a necessary wounding.
How ironic
paradoxical
that this medical reality,
at times, condemns the very Physician
who originated it.
Surely, God has no business wielding knives.
For when it’s His hand implicated in the cut
we do not
will not
accept
His necessary wounding.
Rather,
We get up faster than we should
and ignore Physican’s orders to:
Confess.
Listen.
Learn.
Change.
And wonder why
the inflammatory anger,
bacterial jealousy,
gangrenous greed,
require constant and continuous
numbing medication.
The physical body so quickly offered up
for doctors to preserve
still always
only
ever
has one
inevitable trajectory
Whereas the soul
if saved
will beat
a million lifetimes
more.
Oh, God,
when I find myself in your O.R.
grant strength.
For when I rouse
and writhe
I long to do so while believing
that this necessary wounding
will wring out of me
a kind of fervent
hopeful prayer
that prophesies—
Your cut facilitates
the cure.
May I trust
Your most skillful hand
to isolate and snip the strings
that tether my hope
to fleeting earthly things.
This is,
the doctors say,
the loathsome way
the lonesome way
for me
to be
finally
and forever
saved.