Binding Wounds

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” – Psalm 147:3

On the inpatient surgical service, wound dressing typically fell to the medical student or intern during morning rounds, whoever was lowest on the totem pole. The team would stride in, the senior resident asking the patient a few questions while the junior resident did “single-point” auscultation (placing the stethoscope at the lower sternum to hit up heart and abdomen at the same time—notoriously sloppy but efficient). One of them would peel back the dressing, examine the site, then orders would be issued and entered while the team strode off to the next room, leaving the student or intern to redress the wound.

 

Those were the quieter moments on rounds, taking out packs of gauze and paper tape from my white coat pocket, fielding residual questions from the patient. If you think about it, the binding of a wound is an intimate and thoughtful act. It says, I see your hurt, your imperfect places, the things you might not show other people, the places you’ve been wounded or where you carry pain. I am reaching out to touch those places so they can be healed.

 

People like to talk about giving yourself compassion, about forgiving and being kind to yourself. But really, I have nothing to give myself. The only way I can bear my brokenness is to turn to a God who binds up my wounds. Who offers grace when I expect judgment, who sees and understands the depths of my struggles as no one else can. To give myself compassion is merely to receive the compassion He gives to me. I must see myself as forgiven because He has forgiven me. I must be gentle with myself because He is gentle with me. I must have the strength to heal and go on because that is the unspoken purpose in bandaging anything at all. 

 

And He is no minion, no minor member of the team. The next verse says, “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” How jarring: this would be like the attending, the director of the entire surgical service, showing up on morning rounds just to rebandage some patient’s incision. But this is precisely how God uses his power. May we encounter this Healer who “lifts up the humble” (verse 6), who reaches out to touch us in our brokenhearted places.