Teresa Hirst

My husband bought me a favorite Carl Bloch print for my birthday last year. It’s a giclée on canvas—mounted, but not framed. I propped it on the back of the piano until we bought a frame and decided where to hang it. Six months it waited there, unframed, until I moved it to the top of a bookshelf near where I eventually wanted to hang it. Another three months passed, and I moved it to a closet to make room for Christmas decorations.

Now that the decorations are down, I still don’t have a frame. The wall where I intend to hang it holds other artwork destined for a wall in my husband’s office, which isn’t ready yet.  I’m waiting. Today, I thought of that painting—Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda by Carl Bloch. I needed to unwrap the painting and put it up somewhere, anywhere, even if it is still a transition place like a simple IKEA easel.

I’m healing from a minor surgery last week, and like the painting without a home, I’m waiting through the healing process.  When I suffer physically—and probably in other ways, too—I feel like the certain man at the pool of Bethesda, under a cover that needs lifting.

This time, my cover feels like a cloud covering my normal life and disconnecting me from the people in that existence. They surround me and reach out, but I can’t reach back as well I want.

In the past half year I’ve stood beside a friend overcoming a crises and a husband recovering from an accident, but I helplessly wonder what more can I offer?  Now that I am the one needing aid, I understand why it is hard to grasp the help that is extended.

Gratefully, my healing comes hour by hour not month by month. And in my short path, I’m being carried closer with empathy toward those still in the transition of healing. Someday, I hope they will be whole, but until then, I might offer my easel.

An answer to My Daily Question: Have I Seen the Hand of God Reaching Out Touch Us Today?