Heart Fixer
“Go down the valley,” they said. “You would find him there. His robe white, his beards full, his eyes like a song”
“Go down the valley,” they said. “You would find him there, the heart-fixer, he would fix you,” and so, down the valley I went.
_
I had traveled for three days and nights before I saw the valleys. My legs throbbed, and my throat ached with thirst. My waterskin had dried up like the stale bread I had left. My strength was long gone. The only thing that kept me going was the ache in my heart, it kept getting worse, and the pain propelled me.
I had traveled here because I heard tales of him, the heart fixer. They said no one met him that left the same way. Every person I spoke to testified to how he changed their lives and ended with an invitation to see for themselves.
His house was hard to miss because it was the only house standing in the valleys. As I approached his house, I saw him sitting by the door. He was exactly as they said he would look. Hope filled my heart. If he looked like what they said he looked like, maybe he also did what they said he did.
He offered me water and food, and I saw that he had scars on his hands as he did. He offered to wash my feet. I had no energy left for persuasion, so I let him. As he washed, I looked at my feet and then his, and I saw that he had scars on them too.
I don’t understand. Didn’t they say he healed without leaving scars? How come he had scars himself?
“Come,” he beckoned to me after a while. He offered me a robe colored in vulnerability and asked me to swap my clothes for it. I was skeptical. The robe he offered looked very light compared to my thick garments. How could it do a better job than my clothes, especially in this cold world? But I changed anyway.
He led me to the operating table and opened me up. First, he cleaned, taking out unforgiveness and every semblance of it. Then, he started to stitch me back up with threads of hope and love. With every groan I made, he asked, “Do you trust me?”, “Do you believe in me”? He reassured me with every tear I shed, “I’m here. You are not alone.”
Stitch by stitch with threads of hope and love, he fixed me till I was whole again.
As I bid farewell and embark on my journey back home a few days later, I remember the scars on his hands and feet, and I wonder. Why does he have scars if he could heal the heart without evidence of the void?
Does the heart fixer need fixing, or does he still carry around his scars so that when he says “I understand what you are going through” as he stitches us up, we believe because his scars show he is familiar with pain, the same kind we feel?
