Minor Miracles

Raised as a good Southern girl, I know that talking (or writing) about bodily functions is inappropriate.

But I just have to tell you about my recent healing, and to do that I have to tell you about my boogers.

Since radiation two years ago, I have had mucus in my nose but no boogers. In the last few days, however, I have felt like I have bottle caps, with their raggedy metal edges, in my nostrils.

Boogers! I’ve had to blow the little bottle caps out of my nose!

You probably haven’t noticed that I haven’t had boogers, nor do I hope you will notice that my boogers are back. I hope that this minor miracle will not be obvious  to you.

My primary losses are obvious. When you see me, you know that I struggle with balance as I walk with my pretty wooden cane. You see that I do not see very well. If we socialize for more than two hours, you see that I struggle with fatigue when I lie down on a nearby couch.

These losses affect my life more than the legion of others that I notice, but it’s still a little weird for my right upper lip to lift like it’s tied to a marionette string or for a high tone in my right ear to obscure anything I might otherwise hear.

It’s weird that my left foot is often blue and cold. It’s weird that I might think of a word like “bifurcate” but not the word “split.”

I could go on and on. It’s weird, and kind of interesting, being me.

Lately, though, sometimes part of me heals in one of these ways that you would never notice, but I do.

The healing amuses me and gives me hope. What might heal?

The healing also teaches about the miracle that is my body. Though some things don’t work anymore, a lot of things do. My fingernails still grow, for example, and my right elbow bends. That’s amazing.

I’m pretty sure I’ll always live with some of these deficits, which is a bummer, but my body is still trying to heal, which is amazing. (Maybe that’s why I still need to sleep so much.)

As a kid, I read a book about Cory Ten Boom,  a Christian under arrest, as I remember it, in Nazi Germany. I remember that black flies pestered her and her ilk, and at a prayer meeting, she insisted that they pray for the flies.

That night, they would have been caught praying were it not for the guards being bugged off by the flies.

Cory Ten Boom was thankful for the flies, and I am thankful for my boogers.