I’ve had a load of health issues this year so far. I won’t bore you with details, but one of the issues has been my skin. I got over 6 spots removed as pre-cancerous and was told by my dermatologist to “stay out of the sun from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.!” But my health issues continued still, and so did skin issues.
One day I started having itchy feet, but I didn’t think too much of it. But then I started having itchy palms, too. Then I started thinking a lot. Who remembers my blogs from like 10 years ago when I had skin maggots?! Yes, little maggot worms under my skin eating their way out! Anyway, I had a spot like that on my side under my armpit, and I thought it was one of the skin maggots so I tried popping it but it wasn’t what I thought. Basically, I popped it too early (dermatologist thought maybe it was from a spider bite – you guys have seen the spiders I’ve found in my room, right?!!!) and it got infected and caused a whole lot of other problems.
Anyway, while that was going on, my feet and palms were starting to itch real bad. I tried not to itch, but it kept getting worse. My skin started itching in a few other areas but the hands were the worst. I had to put gloves on my hands at night because otherwise I would wake myself up to painfully scratching my hands. It became miserable and painful, and I couldn’t sleep. I got cream and ointment from the pharmacy, and I tried other lotions/Vaseline, and essential oils. But nothing seemed to work! I was becoming more miserable by the day. I mean, imagine non-stop itchy skin and the only relief being actually itching it!
So I gave in. I couldn’t help it. I knew it would make it worse in the long run, but I just had to itch – just a little! A tickle here, a scratch there, and then rubbing the itch away. Ah, it felt so good. Honestly, so good. Relief, a deep breath, and a moment of normalcy. I could type, I could hold my fork, I could watch a movie without the miserable job of avoiding itching my skin. But, as you all know… it got worse. The momentary relief was nothing to the skin on fire itching that came next. And then I realized – in the middle of rubbing and itching my palms like I was never gonna stop – that this was kinda a lot like sin. We avoid it for so long but not long enough. We have self-control some days and others we just can’t stop ourselves. I would try so hard to retain self-control and refuse to itch. But sometimes, I just gave in to the moment, losing sight of the long term healing.
Isn’t that a lot like our sin? We give in to the moment just for a quick fix, a quick high, a quick way to numb the pain but it actually makes us worse in the long run! Sin that we keep itching will only spread and worsen. So that’s when I tried wearing gloves during the day, too. People thought I was crazy wearing gloves in 90 degree heat, but it definitely helped! Sometimes we need to know ourselves well enough to know we can’t do it on our own. We need people, accountability, boundaries, or heck – gloves – so we can manage to grow our self-control.
What got my itching to stop? Well, a treatment of steroids, steroid cream, and allergy pills. It eventually went away. Like I said before, sometimes we can’t face sin on our own. That’s why God tells us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9).
Not that I’m trying to compare God to steroids, but wow talk about POWER! Those pills definitely made me feel stronger and healthier; I had more energy that week than I probably had all year! (No wonder why people get hooked. :/ ) But God is kinda like steroids – except these kind of steroids you can have whenever you ask – NO LIMIT! The times we feel weak and unable to do it ourselves are the very moments God can show us exactly who He is … and who we are without Him. Let’s stop with the incessant itching and giving in to our sin – let’s get the power we need from our Father who gives freely to His children WITHOUT LIMIT!
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