Thoughts and Reflections on Convalescence
Fr. Nigel Mumford+
Oh God, it is my desire to read the hearts of people coming for prayer.
After surgery there is a time of convalescing. . . a time to get your body, mind, and spirit back together.
It’s a Humpty-Dumpty time, if you will. It’s a time to reflect, when you can, but also a time to press through the pain, the discomfort, and the side-effects of medications.
Nausea, dizziness, the sweats, and thoroughly nasty feelings of being totally out-of-whack — convalescing is a time to slowly move back-into-whack. You know that each movement will produce pain, anticipate that pain, thank God for the pain, and then, press through the pain. Slowly, day by day everything gets better, but sometimes having a full day of set-backs is all totally normal. Slowly, the days get better. Slowly, there is less pain.
Now, there comes a fulcrum point, a balance point, a moment of revelation when you know that the Lord is at work. This moment is a shift of thought, moving from the flesh, the physical and emotional issues of dis-ease, into the spiritual side of the healing process. Oh, what a feeling!
We move into a new season: a time of reflection, a time to think about God and His mysteries, a time to meet head-on the threshold of physical and emotional pain, and even the threshold of spiritual pain. It is as if we are being introduced to the pain of Good Friday, a minute glance of what the Lord suffered for us.
To be able to “bump” into the wall of the unknown, without fear is a real but tough blessing.
How did You, Jesus, endure it?
What did happen to all those people whom Jesus healed, anyway?
What did they do after they “bumped” into Jesus?
How did they conduct their lives, having had a glimpse of heaven?
How do you bring your heart into a new alignment with God after trauma and sickness?
Would you let God read your heart?
Can you let what is written here sink into your heart?
Lord, I desire to read people’s hearts so they may be healed.
Please read mine.
Be well, do good works, and for the sake of God, love one another.
Fr. Nigel Mumford+
