It all began with leeches. Those slimy little bloodsuckers, how I love them! They suck, of course, but it is precisely because of how much they suck that I love them so much. Because of leeches, my entire worldview, my entire universe, shifted in just a short period of time. That short period of time was precisely 9 days, which was the amount of time it took for my daughter to fall of her horse, sever her ear (like, seriously...almost completely. ripped. off.) have emergency plastic surgery in the middle of the night (that's a new one, huh? Did you even think plastic surgeons worked nights?) and then spend several days in the ICU with leeches sucking on her ear around the clock.
It is times like these when you learn that all of God's creatures are important. I mean really learn it. In your heart, learn it. Not like it was in Bible School when you sang that song about "If I were a butterfly, I'd thank you God that I could fly." Because there were no verses about fleas or bedbugs, none about vampire bats or mosquitoes, and definitely none about leeches (If I were a lee-ee-eech, I'd thank you God that I could SUCK). No, none like that. So, although the verdict is still a little out for me on those other gross blood-sucking creatures, I am thankful for leeches. I love those slimy little guys. They saved my daughter's ear and brought her back to wholeness. And to me, in my heart and soul, bringing a person back to wholeness is doing God's work.
What leeches did for my daughter's ear was to do their little bloodsucking thing, which did the job of pulling blood from her body through her ear, which allowed a flow of blood into what was, at that point, a dead body part. The tiny capillaries that allow the normal flow of blood in and out had been severed, and the plastic surgeon lacked the ability to re-attach such tiny little veins, so our only hope for her to re-claim her ear was through leeches and their God-given hunger for blood.
You never think about these things, how at one crucial moment your life will come down to depending on leeches. Truly, every single moment of our life is like this, dependent on the tiniest of details, but it is in those blown up, bigger-than-life moments of trauma that you SEE it. You see it so clearly it astounds you.
I remember in the surreal trauma-filled haze of the following day after her accident and surgery, we waited for those leeches. We waited for them like the Israelites waited for God in the desert, both hoping and giving up, uncertain of exactly what the future was for us, or whether this mysterious promised package was really going to save us. The leeches were being flown in from New York, these special "sterile" leeches, raised for medical use, but they were detained at CVG because they were "questionable". Perhaps there were rumors of a terrorist leech attack. We are not sure, but we waited for excruciating hours for the leeches to come and relieve the purple-black swolleness of our daughter's ear.
And arrive they did. At the darkest hour, they came, the nurses and doctors working quickly to attach the leeches to her ear. Within seconds seconds of attaching them, the leeches worked their sucking magic, draining the purple-black blood from her ear. Within seconds, her ear turned to pink. To see it was absolutely astounding and amazing and made me want to bow down in worship to those leeches, to worship the fact of their bloodsucking, to worship the fact of God in them.
That was the moment of my life when I began to have the courage in my heart to really believe that the power to heal exists in every atom of the universe, and in every part of each one of us. All of us, down to the smallest part of our being, are made with the impulse to heal and to help one another. We are all pushing, pulling, sucking one another toward the light, toward wholeness and oneness. We are all leeches, and although on some days we may feel as if the people in our world are annoyed with us for spoiling their dip in the lake, the truth is, the fact of who we are may one day be our saving grace.
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