“Ms Colleen, what is it?” “It’s a wart,” I answer shyly and ashamedly as my students rubbed the hard spot on my arm…an odd place I must admit! I’ve tried everything I know of to get rid of it. I picked at it constantly, pulling the skin off till it bled, much to the disgust and horror of those around to witness my nervous habit. And yet it grew back. OK, the next attack was putting acid on it until it turned white and then pulling it off. I applied faithfully for 2 months pulling off the hard covering and reapplying the acid soon after so it burned! I stopped when I noticed the skin around my wart was becoming damaged and the wart was coming back bigger and with a vengeance! Ugh!!! Finally, this Saturday, I decided to take care of it for good!
I waited at the hospital for 2 hours (a story in itself about being forgotten and then having the nurse overcompensate by bringing me constant snacks and water and asking if I was angry! If only she knew how long we wait in American hospitals!) and finally got in to see the doctor who smelled like stale cigarettes. He pinched the skin around it and said that he can ice it off…at least that’s what I thought he said! I was shown through the back door of his office that lead to a large room filled with beds curtained off for surgeries. I laid down, got my arm dosed in iodine that dripped off my arm in rivers and told not to touch it! The spot was lit with a special light, the Novocain applied, and the incision made…yeah, somehow the procedure turned into exhuming the wart…and then the stitches were tied with “small so little scar, little scar” being breathed by the doctor. He showed me my wart, complete with arm hair still attached (GROSS) and more importantly, the root! YEAH!!! With the help of a professional, the wart will now be gone forever!! Unless of course, some of the root was left behind in the recesses of my arm. Time will tell!
This week I was faced with people confiding in me about conflicts with other staff members…conflicts so deep that poisoned words were splattered across the air and cut the heart. Sadness found root in my soul as I listened to people who either didn’t want to make amends or heard of the other party that refused to resolve the conflict. I heard the roots of bitterness grow deep into their beings as the tears of anger flowed. It made me think of times that I let the same gangrene affect me…what looks like a normal wart on the outside is deeply embedded by a large root that can’t be cured despite all the normal treatments that I did myself.
CS Lewis writes a similar analogy in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Lucy and Edmond’s cousin Eustace gets changed into a horrible dragon due to his greed and selfishness. he tries to tear off his dragon skin over and over again and for a moment he thinks he gets it, but it returns. He tears and tears till it hurts and yet the dragon remains…until Aslan, the Great Lion, takes his claws and rips down the skin until Eustace feels like he’ll die but then he realizes that he is a boy again! A new boy! What Eustace couldn’t do for himself, Aslan did for him! Oh that these friends of mine would realize that the root of bitterness news to be extracted and that only allowing the life changing person of Jesus can cut it out so it won’t come back. Why do we Christians choose to live as slaves to our pride and selfishness when we are conquerors in Christ? Oh to give up trying on my own to get rid of deep rooted pain, sadness, and bitterness and humbly admit that I need help! May time show the rooted wart is gone for good.