Day 38
Heal All You Meet
Reflection by: Anne Hillebrand

One morning, just before my second daughter's second birthday, I noticed that she was having difficulty breathing. I called her doctor who asked to see her at our local hospital. Once there, medical personnel transferred her by ambulance to Loyola Hospital while I was left to get there on my own in the car. I arrived at Loyola and was told to wait (for what seemed like an interminable time!) in a waiting room.

While I was waiting, a nurse came and asked me to give permission for my daughter to have a tracheotomy. I signed my name and sat there numbly. A lady in the waiting room walked up to me and handed me a Kleenex and simply said, "I thought you could use this." Could I ever! The tears flowed as I called my husband and the neighbor who was caring for my other two children. I later learned that my daughter had contracted a rare condition called epiglottitis in which her epiglottis swelled to the point where she could not breathe. This condition is always fatal if not treated immediately. Luckily, my daughter responded well to the antibiotics she was given throughout her subsequent weeks in the PICU and came home six weeks later, fully healed.

I have never forgotten the kind woman who walked up to me and simply handed me a Kleenex at a time when I, myself was in great need of healing. I did not yet fully understand the severity of my daughter's illness and thought I was holding up pretty well - I don't think I looked that different from the other people waiting in that same room. Yet this woman reached out to me in what would become one of my moments of greatest need.

This incident made me understand that everyone who walks among us may be wounded in some way. Whether our wounds are visible as my daughter's were, or not visible like mine, most of us are in need of some kind of healing. Throughout Jesus' life, everyone whom He touched was healed. In Jesus' first post-Resurrection appearances to his followers, he showed them his own wounds. "Touch me," He told Thomas; "Touch me," He told his disciples. When we touch (literally or figuratively) all those we meet, whether we can see their wounds or not, we can become instruments of healing that Jesus Himself showed us. When we touch those we meet - whether by handing them a Kleenex, giving them a smile or kind word, or simply listening - we are touching and healing them with God's incarnate love, God's love made flesh in us.