Hitting the Secret Archives! Marina's Kitchen Table Post #9 - Facing Surgery (and Vanity)

From April 19... somewhere in the mid 90's... sad that I didn't date my writing back then. I totally depended on my computer to save my dates...live and learn... 

Please read the epilogue at the end... from today (September 7,2013)
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Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Proverbs 31:30

Just hearing the words "Proverbs 31" can make me shudder! I can't believe how short I fall in comparison to the triumphs of the woman that this was written of. 

But lately, it is this single verse that has brought me comfort.

I have faced the fact that I am going to have surgery (4/24) and that in itself is a relief. At one time, my biggest concern was "Is this cancer?", but I caught myself in a quandry over the weekend. I was not so concerned WHAT they would find, but HOW they would find it!

Now, I am not a great beauty. I don't wear a lot of makeup (usually not any!) and I don't have a youthful and svelt figure. What I lack in "skinny" I make up for in saggy skin! 

I have not ever thought of myself as a "vain" person, but I found myself more concerned with the
hassles of post op and the possibility of scarring rather than what the prognosis would be! Talk about having my priorities all messed up!


I was disappointed in my own reaction (which gave me the right to throw a pity party) and then I faced the reality of it all; what will my battle wounds reveal of my heart?

I know people. A lot of people. I knew a woman who died at the age of 97, after burying 6 of her own children. She was not bitter, and never expressed disappointment or anger at God for what He had brought her through. How could she? She had been given a long, full life, in which she had been able to encourage many and share God's grace with all.

I know another woman, who is married to a wonderful man. Yet what flows from her is the bitterness of a thwarted romance some 40 years earlier. It has affected her health, her looks (sorrowful scorn), her attitude and her witness. It is sad.

I can let these scars, no matter how noticeable from the outside, either give me character or decay my heart. I only pray that I am worthy to carry these scars, and that I will consider it a privilege to be used by God in such an unusual way!

Oh, I expect that there will be days of pain, being inconvenienced and down right frightened. I need to focus on the end result. Healing. If not divinely, through a touch of God, then through the
gift of medical technology. Someday it will be ULTIMATELY, to be restored unto God, in heaven. Until then, I will go to battle, gladly bearing the scars of whatever trial He brings me through. Willing to go again, wherever He may call me. Learning the lessons again, and again, and again...until He returns.


Epilogue:

The surgery was a "partial parotidectomy" to remove a lymph node in the parotid gland that was in my right cheek, near my jaw line. They had to make a "Y" shaped cut around my ear to get to it, and I still have a scar from in front of my ear, in back of my ear, and down my neck. It was the most painful thing I ever went through post op. It all started with an episode of toxoplasmosis - from cats. Always wear rubber/latex gloves under your garden gloves (and a mask if it's dusty, since you can inhale the bugs that cause it!).

Now, people say they don't see the scar - but I know one of my earlobes is different than the other, and know that the scar is there. I can trace it down my neck. 

Why are we like that? When others don't even know we've been scarred, we are quick to point it out! I want to get over that. I mean, I realize that a lot of it is my HIS-story - ways He has healed me and I need to tell that, but not always the hurts, the things that would have, should have killed me that didn't - but left a scar still... those need to be let go of, right?  Do you have scriptures or words of encouragement to assist me?