The moonlight will be as bright as the sunlight,
— Isaiah 30:26
and the sunlight will be seven times brighter–
like the light of seven days– on the day that
the Lord bandages his people’s injuries
and heals the wounds he inflicted.
This post expands upon a more general post describing different ways that God speaks to us (see “God Speaks” post). One of the ways that God can speak to us is through his Word. What does that mean, exactly? I really had no idea, until it happened to me. It means that God can speak to us through the Bible— when we’re reading it— or through verses that we’ve memorized and stored up in our hearts, that come to mind unbidden, when we need them.
God grabbed my attention in a way that I’ll never forget on the evening of Tuesday, September 20, 2022. Around 6:30 PM that evening, I was wrapping things up at my dad’s house, about to leave. I’d already packed my car and said “Goodbye” to him, in fact. I’d been working on a long-term project there, converting a school bus into a liveable space. I had given myself a “To Do” list and a timeline for each task. Although I was tired, having been there since sunrise, I decided I wanted to get one more thing done before I left. To my peril, I ignored that tiny voice telling me to “just go home and deal with it tomorrow.”
I grabbed a stick of wood I wanted to trim down, and I headed for the table saw. “This will only take a few more seconds,” I thought. Please understand— this was not my first rodeo with the table saw. I’d used it hundreds of times before. I knew what I was doing. And I knew what I was doing, in this particular instance, was dangerous— especially the way I was doing it. I was trying to cut a thin slice off a small piece of wood, length-wise. That didn’t leave much space to hold onto the end of the wood as I slid it towards the vertical saw blade. As I was cutting it, the wood started to squeeze against the rip-fence of the table saw and push up, off the saw blade. I turned the saw off. I looked around for a suitable “pusher” stick. And I didn’t find one.
So— impatient, I turned the saw back on.
I don’t have a clear memory of what happened next. I saw blood. I didn’t feel any pain. Just a vague, warm, tingly sensation, like when your leg falls asleep. I realized I must have cut myself, when I saw the blood. “I need to stop the bleeding,” was my first thought. I ran outside the shop and found a shop towel, wrapping it quickly around the bloody pulps of the fingers of my left hand. I then realized that I’d left the saw on. I ran back inside the shop and flipped the switch on the saw. I ran inside the house and told my dad, “Dad, we need to go to the ER. NOW.” He saw the blood splattered on the towel, my chin, my arms, and my legs, and he simply said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
My dad started driving as I called a local ER to give them a heads up that I was coming. They didn’t seem too impressed. I was a little taken aback by that, being a nurse, and knowing that time matters when it comes to impaired circulation. My dad took a different route from how I would’ve driven. The route he took, had us going right by a different hospital, the branch that I work for— so last minute, as we were about to pass the exit, I asked him to take it. It was closer, and I just felt something telling me to go there.
Emergency room x-rays revealed that the saw had entirely severed the bone of my ring finger, sliced halfway through the distal joint of my middle finger, and nicked the end of my index finger. Looking from the palm side of my hand, I could see the pale white bone of my ring finger. I was surprised by how small it is. Within two hours of injury, a nice ER resident doctor was stitching my fingertips back together. That was the most uncomfortable hour of my life thus far. It was a tricky process, as wrapping them in the towel had effectively stopped the blood loss, but they started bleeding again as we attempted to clean them up. Each needle prick for each stitch, brought more blood.
I watched him sew up the first two, but I couldn’t bear to look at my ring finger, as it was twisted sideways and hanging on only by some flesh on one side. I told him, “Please, doctor… do whatever you need to do, just make my finger look like a finger again.” He told me, “Well, that means I’ll have to pull it.” I said, “Okay, pull it,” and gritted my teeth. I didn’t feel him pull it, but he must have, because when he finally told me he was done, my fingertip was back in its proper place and alignment. I thanked him for saving my finger. He told me, lawyerlike, that it was probably too soon to say that he had saved anything. But I truly felt in my heart, that he had saved my ring fingertip that day.
When the attending ER doctor came by, he told me that I should expect the distal portion of my ring finger to die. He gave me the name and number of an orthopedic hand specialist and told me to call, in the morning, for a consult appointment. The specialist would determine whether and when to amputate. I was discharged around 10:30 PM, and I took my hydrocodone (pain) and Keflex (prophylactic antibiotic) prescriptions and went home.
That night when I got home, I flipped my Bible open to read. I’d been reading Isaiah, but I’d been feeling guilty for reading it so slowly. When I opened my Bible, a blood drop fell onto the page— not the page I was on, a few pages ahead. Annoyed, I tried to wipe it off, then I read the text that it fell on— I have a study Bible, and it fell in the commentary— the text didn’t make an impression on me, so I flipped back to where I’d left off and read a chapter or two. The next night, Wednesday, I made it to the blood-stained page. Turns out, I’d been reading at the perfect pace for God to gift me with this message, which stunned me— “… on the day that the Lord bandages his people’s injuries and heals the wounds he inflicted.”
Thirty chapters of wars and woes and not once had the text been so specific about God “bandaging and healing” the wounds of his people. My fingers were wrapped in bloody bandages at the time. I was to see the hand surgeon in two days to get his opinion on amputation. However, when I’d called that morning to make the appointment, his nurse had informed me— “heads up” she said— from his assessment of the ER records, that he planned to amputate the next week.
When I read these words, tears sprang instantly to my eyes, as full-body chills raced up and down my spine. All the hairs on my arms stood up, and my body buzzed electric. I felt this was God’s personal promise to me that “everything would be okay”— that I wouldn’t need an amputation. Words of praise whispered from my lips, “Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God, thank you…” and my frenzied mind was washed over with a sense of calm, of peace. My fear disappeared.
Still, I prayed almost constantly for the next two days, and solicited prayers from family and friends. I did everything I could to promote circulation in my fingers— that was the danger— if blood failed to continue circulating through my fingertips, they would die, and I would have no choice but to go along with amputation, or risk infection and further injury.
When I saw him Friday morning after my injury, the hand surgeon was very surprised. He surprised me, too, when he told me that he had planned to amputate the distal joint of my middle finger as well as the distal joint of my ring finger. The ER doctors hadn’t made me aware of the severity of my middle finger’s injury— the place where the saw cut through was spongy bone at the end of the middle joint— a place where the bone was unlikely to re-grow. I hadn’t realized that I had two fingers on the chopping block! He asked whether I could move my fingertips, and I was able to produce the tiniest wiggle, even from the distal joint of my middle finger. He told me that meant the tendons hadn’t been cut— somehow. Given that, added to the great color of my fingertips & nail beds and the fact that I had some sensation still, he told me that he saw no reason to amputate at that time. (And four months later, no amputation).
I thank God every day, that He was with me through this whole ordeal. He gave me a supernatural sense of peace and calm, when it happened. I didn’t panic. I wasn’t freaking out. I wasn’t even terribly scared, just trying to think through the next reasonable steps. And the funny thing is that, just a day or two before, I’d been Googling basic field trauma care, wondering whether I could actually be of use in a field medicine situation— whether I could hack it, mentally. Weird as it sounds, this injury was a gift to me in more ways than one—it answered that question with a resounding, “Yes!” If I can stay calm when my own fingers are hanging halfway off, then surely I can stay calm when the fingers belong to someone else!
I thank God for healing me. I know that all healing is by the grace of God. I don’t know whether I would go so far as to say that God “inflicted” this wound upon me. I believe the historical context of the verse I quoted from Isaiah is talking about the future restoration of Israel after they return from exile, exile being a “wound inflicted” by God, as a consequence of Israel’s disobedience and rebellion. But, perhaps my not-listening to the tiny voice that told me to go home— or the voice that told me that what I was doing was dangerous— I had multiple opportunities to turn away from my folly— but I stubbornly persisted— perhaps that counts as rebellion. So, perhaps you could say that God did “inflict” this wound upon me. Regardless, I thank Him. The miraculous healing I’ve received will be a reminder to me, for the rest of my days on Earth, of the awesome power and love of my God.
I thank God also that He sent me to the hospital with the ER resident on-site who had the skills to save my fingertips. Recall, we almost drove to a different hospital. Who knows what would have happened had I gone there. At my 4-week ortho follow-up, the doctor told me that I was healing “better than textbook“… and he attributed my incredible healing to luck, the skill of the ER resident who stitched my fingers up, and my general youth and good health. I no longer believe in luck, but I do believe in God, and I believe that God can use people for His purposes. I believe that God directed me to that resident’s ER that night.
Although I wouldn’t have signed up for it, this hand injury has been a major faith-strengthening experience for me. I’ve now actually felt God’s peace that surpasses all understanding. I’ve learned what it means for God to speak to me through his Word. I now have an ebenezer and an easy opener for God-centered conversations (see “Grateful for the Scars — An Ebenezer Story” post). And I’m learning to hear His tiny voice better, that whisper of intuition that we too often dismiss. Thank you, Lord, for these many lessons from this one experience.
After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
— 1 Kings 19:12
And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper…
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