Wound Debridement
Baby Girl,
As your Dad, I know that dental hygiene is something I don’t need to worry about with you. You can’t stand the taste of morning breath in your mouth. You laughed when your client asked you yesterday if you ever stop and think, “Did I remember to brush my teeth?” The idea of leaving that terrible taste in your mouth is laughable. You would never.
Sometimes, when you speak, you leave a bad taste in the mouth of the person listening to you.
I think it’s funny you stopped before typing the rest of that sentence to ask Google if I’m using it correctly. “Can you leave a bad taste in someone else’s mouth?”
So, what did you find?
The idiom, “Leave a bad taste in one’s mouth,” means that something has caused an unpleasant memory or a bad feeling.
Explanation: Something has made you feel bad or disgusted, or you have an unpleasant memory of an experience.
Example: The way the waitress treated us left a bad taste in my mouth and I never went back.
There it is. Sometimes when you speak, you leave a bad taste in the mouth of the person listening to you.
…There is no need to cry. That is not the joy of the LORD being so full in you that it leaks out of your eyes. That is shame. I’m not shaming you.
You know what I’m talking about and you already feel bad about it. It’s time to stop feeling bad. Feeling bad was the godly sorrow that immediately led you to repentance.
As soon as you’ve experienced that godly sorrow and that sorrow has done its work leading to repentance, it’s time to INTENTIONALLY stop your soul from going there.
There you go. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to keep talking to you through tear-stained glasses.
You’re distracted. Ask Google why it looks like dry raindrops on your glasses after you have cried.
- A FEW MINUTES LATER –
If you haven’t found your answer yet, just know that you need to clean your glasses after you cry and that’s good enough.
Tuesday night, after Bible study, you became aware that you had been insensitive in how you interacted with one of the women and you felt terrible. I was so proud of you when one of the first things you did following Bible study was to text a sincere apology, owning your insensitivity and acknowledging the position you put her in emotionally.
You didn’t try to explain yourself or justify what you were thinking, you just acknowledged the pain you recognized you had caused.
Did you notice that you only thought of it once in the 20 hours it took her to gather her response? That’s growth. Do you remember when feeling bad would have dominated your thought life until you had assurance that you had been forgiven or had at the very least justified what you did and tried to make them see it from your side?
Baby, be careful. People trust you and that trust comes at a high price to them.
Vulnerability has become second nature to you because everything you could possibly feel vulnerable about, you have brought to Me and I have healed.
When others are vulnerable with you, keep in mind that often you are dealing with deep wounds that have not even begun to heal. You can be a healing agent by dressing and caring for that wound, or you can become one more layer of environmental damage to that wound.
When people peel back the dressings that are covering their wounds, exposing them to you, take great precaution to protect it.
In the hospital, when you’re visiting with a patient who has a wound and a nurse comes in to tend to the wound, what do they do?
They introduce themselves to the patient and let them know they are going to look at the wound while washing their hands and putting on a fresh pair of gloves. Next, they carefully and gently pull back the bandage to assess the wound checking in with the patient to make sure they’re okay.
Sometimes they say it’s looking good and leave the current bandage on. Sometimes they ask permission to clean it up a little and put a fresh bandage on.
So, if it needs a fresh bandage, they don’t just do it without permission?
No, they usually ask the patient if that’s okay.
But it’s their job to tend to that wound. Why would they not just do their job?
…
That’s a hard question for you to answer.
Respect. They respect that the patient is their own person and that, for some patients, they need time to mentally process what is about to be done because wound care is painful. It is painful when they must debride that wound to get the ick out of it so it has a better opportunity to heal.
Do you know why wounds need debrided?
Is it because of scarring?
Look it up.
Debridement is a medical procedure that removes dead or damaged tissue from a wound to promote healing and prevent infection.
· Removes dead tissue: Dead tissue can slow healing and provide a place for bacteria to grow.
· Prevents infection: Necrotic tissue can create an ideal environment for pathogens to replicate.
· Simulates growth factors: Debridement can stimulate growth factors and reset timing of wound re-epithelialization (the process of repairing damaged epithelial tissue).
As a minister of My LOVE, debridement is something you will be doing on a regular basis.
Go ahead, remind yourself what it means to minister.
Minister = to attend to the needs of someone.
Every one of My children are ministers of My LOVE. You are My hands and feet here on earth and there are gaping, oozing, infected wounds all around you. You can’t heal anyone, but you can minister to them and dress the wounds as they heal to minimize scarring and reduce the risk of infection.
When you are careless with people, which can be as simple as treating them as you would want to be treated, you can open wounds up to infection.
Had you not immediately addressed your error, the bandage you ripped off her wound, exposing it, could have caused it to remain exposed for days, weeks, or even years. She risked greatly opening up to you in the first place; then, being exposed, one of her greatest fears came true.
If you were not sensitive at that moment, you might have taken her excusing herself as being in a hurry to get home and you could potentially have never heard from her again. The conversation that followed was healing salve on her wound.
Don’t be in such a hurry to see wounds heal. Deep wounds can take months to years of debridement in the healing process. You don’t believe me? Go ahead, look.
“Many chronic wounds can take weeks, months, or years to finally close. At the same time, the patient’s nutrition and functional ability must be continually assessed.”
Your eyes are getting teary again because you know where I’m headed.
You had her look up 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind.” You were wanting to explain that anxiety is rooted in fear and fear is a spirit that does not come from God. That is true and you are right. That spirit is the root and it is a spiritual issue causing physical issues, not the other way around; however, the Spirit of God is the only power great enough to remove that spirit of fear.
Has this new friend invited Holy Spirit to take up residence yet?
Does she have access to the power to defeat the spirit of fear?
If not, you are only rubbing salt in the wound because knowing spiritual roots does no good until a debridement specialist is present to clean and dress the wound properly.
I’m going to pivot back to a subject we’ve discussed many times to drive this point home.
You can’t force what you know to take root in another person’s spirit. You can only expose their soul (mind, will, and emotions) to the truth and invite Me to water and fertilize that seed causing it to grow.
Growth takes time and a harvest takes even more time.
Plant seeds and keep moving. Give the seeds time to germinate.
Staring at the seed will not make it grow any faster.
Putting more seeds in the same bit of earth will not cause that first seed to grow any faster.
Plant seeds and walk away.
It took six months for the two small seeds your friend planted in you January of 2023 to take root and begin to grow. From germination, almost six months after they were planted, it took TWO MORE months, TWO MORE conversations, and A LOT MORE prayer before those seeds produced a harvest in your soul.
Farming takes time and patience.
Caring for wounds takes time and patience.
If you don’t have what you hope for yet, wait for it patiently. My timing is perfect.
Back to bed.
LOVE,
Daddy
Proverbs 12:18