Life Verse: Hosea 6:1-3 - He Will Bandage Our Wounds

Come, let us return to the Lord.

He has torn us to pieces;

now he will heal us.

He has injured us;

now he will bandage our wounds.

In just a short time he will restore us,

so that we may live in his presence.

Oh, that we might know the Lord!

Let us press on to know him.

He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn

or the coming of rains in early spring.

Hosea 6:1-3

When I had the opportunity to teach English in China for a little over a month in college, to say that I had some anxiety issues would be putting it mildly. Any time I was not teaching or participating in scheduled activities with our hosts, I was literally hiding in my dorm room obsessing over lesson plans and listening to Ginny Owens and Audio Adrenaline on my old school discman, reading 2 Corinthians 1:8-11 multiple times per day, and waiting for my Yahoo Mail to load on the slowest internet connection ever hoping to hear an encouraging word from someone.

As a culmination of the summer school program, each class was scheduled to put on a small skit version of a fairy tale or fable, showcasing the students' increasing English skills in front of all of their parents and the community. I wrote my dramatization of The Three Little Pigs, selected what roles all my 2nd and 3rd grade students were to play, and set about finding props to illustrate the three types of houses. I was able to use construction paper for the straw and stick houses, but I wanted something special for the brick house. It took a lot of effort and an embarrassing language faux pas at the town's super department store to find myself in possession of a cardboard box to use to create it.

The day of the presentation came with many dramatic things planned for our performance, including other skits that subtly declared the gospel in a way that the government couldn't protest. 

Just as we were loading up the bus with the students, a quick downpour occurred ... right on all of my props. The brick and stick houses survived, but the straw house was badly damaged. I was unable to control myself and downright sobbed in front of everyone the whole way to the auditorium.

When we arrived there, one of the Chinese-American interns waited till I wasn't as much of a mess and dragged me into the bathroom with that straw house. At first I was embarrassed and angry because she was the calmest, most self-composed person of the whole group and had really intimidated me for most of the trip. But I don't remember any word that she spoke. She took a pair of scissors and cut the tape that secured all of the construction paper together and then silently dried each warped piece under the hand-dryer until each one was relatively straight and unwrinkled. Then she taped them all back together, good as new.

While she was doing this, I felt God speaking to me: "This is what I am doing in you. You just have to be patient. Yes, it's painful,  but it will all be worth it in the end." It wasn't an audible voice, but those words are the ones I always hear in my memory.

This life metaphor has stayed with me and has proven true for me. More recently, the little and big downpours of my anxiety and depression were turned into a hurricane of circumstances I am not even sure how I lived through. By God's grace, I'm on the other side of it, and for once I really, really feel and recognize the continuing truth of what God spoke over me that day.

My life was absolutely destroyed, and I was in the worst desolation I could have imagined. I couldn't even find any of the pieces, but God kept them in the palm of His hand and is slowly, patiently drying all the damaged and defective parts of me with His Word and fitting them back together into something that I can't even describe and still don't have a clear view of at this point. He knows how to create beauty with the mosaic pieces of the soul.

All I know, is that I used to be living in a prison that - as a daughter of God - I had the keys to, and now each day I wake up surprised to find that I can walk in the freedom of a new day, with new insights, and a new hope. 

The hope that was the tiniest speck of light in the night of my despair has grown and is growing. 

It overwhelms me.

Further thoughts:

• Hosea sung by Shane and Shane