Fractures and Figs

“The inertia of redemption carries your story along.” – Paul Tripp

The road lines blur through a thick veil of tears as I’m merging onto the on-ramp and let God have it. “There’s no way in Hell this is good, God!” My screams are swallowed up by the ambient sounds of the near-empty freeway and my tears hidden by the blackness of the night. Words not typically in my vocabulary reverberate off the windshield and echo in my mind. I’m not generally an angry man, but tonight I am. Anger and hurt are pouring out of me at decibels I have seldom reached. How could a God, who is supposed to want my good, allow such pain? How could the one who said He’d carry me, seemingly let me fall so hard?

I once read that we have 100,000 miles of blood vessels running throughout our bodies. Think about that. 100,000 miles. That’s enough to wrap around the earth four times.

Now imagine each of those vessels lined with barbed wire, and imagine someone pulling this wire out. Excruciating, to say the least. That is what a long season of my life felt like. Like God was pulling out barbed wire through each and every inch of my being at variable speeds. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. But no matter how fast or slow the pull, pain ensued. As the wire slid through each vessel, each barb would take with it a piece of me. It wasn’t selective. As it took the bad, with it came a lot of good. As it took with it a lot of idols, anxiety, fear of others, vanity, it also took relationships, dreams, happiness and security. It left me a bloodied mess.

But blood is not always bad.

I am a physical therapist. In my job, I see a lot of patients that have undergone various surgeries to repair, reconstruct, or alter the body in some way to help them optimize as full of a recovery as possible. One of the procedures I get to rehabilitate people after is called a microfracture. These surgeries are done in areas of bone that have lost cartilage, typically during an injury. Without this cartilage, we can lose significant mobility, motion, function, and simply live in pain. So, during this procedure, a surgeon will purposefully poke a series of small holes in the end of a bone to induce bleeding, with the hope that this bleeding will stimulate regrowth of cartilage.

Sounds kind of crazy, huh? Why would someone purposefully fracture something, making it more unstable and more vulnerable? If surgeons care for their patients, why would they seemingly damage them further?

Because sometimes induced trauma is necessary.

Temporary damage is purposefully caused so healing can occur. The body needs a trigger to become aware that healing even needs to happen; that it can happen.

After the actual surgery, there’s rehabilitation. Rehab isn’t fun. Typically, full weight-bearing isn’t allowed until five or six weeks after surgery. And it’s painful. On top of the pain that was present before surgery, now we have increased pain and dysfunction because of the surgery. But in the end, it’s worth it. The patient may walk with a limp for a little while, but as time goes on they get stronger, eventually walking normally again. They are able to get back to activities that once would have put them at risk. Yes, they could have lived without the surgery, but they wouldn’t have thrived.

This reminds me of a story in the Bible about a guy named Amos. How does microfracture surgery possibly relate to the Bible you may ask? Well, Amos was a normal guy God asked to walk away from his day job to be God’s mouthpiece to His people.

Amos was a shepherd, but he also was an arborist; he tended to trees. Amos specifically took care of sycamore-fig trees that often grew in the valley. Now typically, these trees produce fruit, however, left to its own devices, this fruit is bitter and lacks sweetness that we would typically attribute to most fruit. Amo’s job was to bring out the best in these figs. The way he did this was by manually scratching or wounding the skin of the fruit. By doing this, it would allow some of the juices to spill out onto the outside of the fruit, thus speeding up the ripening process and making the sycamore-fig sweet enough to be eaten. This, too, seems counterintuitive. How can damaging something on purpose lead to something better? I don’t know the exact science behind the process, but for this particular fruit, it just works.

Just like the surgeon performing the microfracture induces healing through initial damage and bleeding, Amos similarly does this to the fig to make it good fruit. Before this process, the fruit is essentially useless. It may grow, but without the trauma, no one wants to eat it anyways because it is so, so bitter.

God asked Amos to convey a similar process to His people, who were ripe with sin. Amos was the one chosen by God to deliver a message of God’s wrath—destroying what was bad—and then hope—restoring life to His people by raising up the faithful few to whom He would give His blessing. God performed surgery; He drew blood so things could be renewed. God scratched the fruit. He allowed pain so actual fruitfulness could occur.

Sometimes we need that trigger. Our hearts are the same as that damaged bone or bitter fig. We need a signal and a process to be started. We need pain to be induced so we can become aware of our desperate need for a Savior to save us from our idols, our sin, and ourselves. Just like our bodies can compensate for injuries, we begin to find ways to compensate for the wounds we have collected over the years. We learn to live with our less-than-free selves. We may not even realize it, but it happens. We get so used to functioning out of fear and anxiety, pride and defensiveness, shame, guilt, etc., that we settle for an existence that is less than what God wants for us. Even if we are aware of our need for heart surgery, we may not know how to start the process, much less have the courage to do so.

So, pain becomes God’s grace to us.

He allows us to bleed a little so our hearts can be transformed. Once the process starts, real healing can actually occur. It may take a while, but God wants to transform us into who He created us to be in the first place, before the effects of the world, the flesh, and the enemy got ahold of us. But we still have to opt-in. We can try to escape the pain and choose not to let God do the work in us that He wants to do, but in the end, it will just lead to more pain and more heartache. The temporary pain of opting in is so worth a life of freedom.

Although that long season of my life was painful, I’m so thankful for those barbs and the bleeding. With each rip, they took pieces of me that needed to go. Sure, some good things were ripped in the process, but who’s to say that those things can’t grow back? Who’s to say that what grows won’t be better than what was there before? There have been moments that I have been brought to tears at the realization of what God has done in my heart, the things He has removed, and the good things He has put in their place. And as I think about it, there is still no other way that I could’ve imagined to fix myself on my own. So, in the moments of crying out to God asking, “How is this good?” He was there all along crying with me yet whispering in my ear that it was for my good and for His glory. I’m thankful that God would allow the pain because I, and others around me, see the fruit. I couldn’t have done that on my own. Only a loving Father can take brokenness and bring true life.

You may one day find yourself in a car, screaming at God on the freeway. It’s okay to be there. God isn’t scared of what you have to bring; He wants the real you. He can simultaneously hold your hurt and the immense hope He has for you. He may allow some fractures, and he may allow some scratches and wounds. In those moments, know that He is a good Dad who gives good gifts, and He can use absolutely anything to bring you healing.

- Written by Brett De Yager