A band-aid will never fix it all the way.

So, it's Monday night and I just finished my 5th class of the day.  One class was cancelled due to weather, so technically it was a "light Monday".  In reality, I should be getting ready for bed, taking some tylenol and snuggling up with my heating pad to try and relax some very sore muscles (lots of muscle spasms and seizures the past few days/week).  What I would love to do is put my life jacket on and get in a nice heated therapy pool and so some basic stretching, ROM, and relaxation stuff, but Pella doesn't have a heated thereapy pool, and even if they did, it would not be open at this time of night.  So Arnica, Tylenol and a heating pad will have to do.  But before that, I need to write. 
Every week we have to write a reflection paper for my night class on the speaker and whatever reading has been assigned.  This by no means will represent my final paper, but something was said tonight that I have to process and I wanted to share it with all of you.  As I said, it is late and I'm post-seizure, so coherence might be lacking.  Bear with me.
The speaker tonight was the local hospital chaplain so we were discussing things related to being a hospital chaplain and issues related to that.  (This is the same chaplain who came to see me last fall after my first seizure when things were looking really bad.  I don't know if he remembered me).  Towards the end of the class, I finally asked the question that has been on my mind a lot.  "What do you do with the questions: "Why me?" and "Why does G-d let bad things happen to good people?" and the like?"
I know that I asked those questions when he visited me in the hospital, but I have no memory of what he said.
He paused. And answered with a question of his own.  "What is really behind that question?".  As a group we generated some answers. A sampling includes: "Did I do something to cause this?"  "Is G-d really good?"  "If G-d is good, why is this happening?"
We sat with those questions for awhile and then he spoke again.  He told us that there was no easy answer and that there was a lot of hurt behind those questions.  Then he talked about the dangers of giving an easy answer. He drew an analogy that really hit home with me. 
When you have a deep wound, one that goes deeper than the surface, it is important to make sure it heals from the inside out.  Deep wounds are not simple bandaged, but rather, they are cleaned out and then packed full of stuff (and by stuff I mean mostly sterile dressing material). This keeps the outside from healing over before the inside has healed.  In some cases, if a wound is not packed properly, the outside heals before the inside and the inside fills with fluid and infection and tons of junk.  Then the doctor has to go in and cut it open (lance it) and let the healing start all over again (if it is not lanced it sometimes just bursts on its own after the pressure has built up inside). This is much more painful than giving it time to heal properly the first time.
Life is like that.  Some hurts run really really deep. Sometimes you just want to put a "bandage" on the hurt and when the outside looks good, you figure it is healed.  But it's not.  The real hurt is just festering underneath and someday, it will burst out. And it will hurt.
Healing deep hurt is hard. It takes time.  It takes work. It takes time. It's not a quick fix. And the outside is going to look messy for awhile.  You could go for a bandaid solution and the outside will look neat, for awhile.  Then the hurt will fester and burst out.  And then you have two choices:  Another bandaid or working deep and hard to heal the hurt. The hard work will be scary.  It will mean being vulnerable.  It will hurt. It will take a lot longer than just sticking a band-aid on it.  But it will be worth in in the end. And we don't do the work of healing alone.  We've got Jesus to help us.  Healing is kind of his thing.  He does a lot of it. And he never just settles for a band-aid.

A bandaid will never fix it all the way.