When You Must Ignore the Chigger Bites

I already mentioned chigger bites in another post. But I wanted to say something more about them.
All at the same time that they can be maddeningly itchy if you scratch them, the best way I found to deal with them was to ignore them--except to apply balm.

Everything you read about chigger bites preps you to believe they are going to ruin your life with their awful itch, and to use everything from fingernail polish to alcohol to Chigarid to medicate the bites or suffocate the chiggers which are supposedly still inside the bite. Some articles say the chigger is still inside the bite, and some say they aren't. I really don't know who is right.

I just know that when we had a job to do in South Dakota, we couldn't afford to let chigger bites stop us.

Chigger bites was the price I paid, apparently,  for heading right into the tall weeds behind the property next to the church we were working on, to pick the wild plums that Mrs. Judy Sherman, Sr, wanted to turn into plum jam. We had secured permission to pick from Beth Montour, the kind lady who let our family stay in her little house by the church while we were there.

The next day or so, the bites started popping out and reddening and itching. I would have to tell myself not to scratch them, because as soon as I touched them, the itch was maddening.

But if I could make myself stop and just get through the next couple minutes, the itch would be bearable and I could go on with life.

 I thought how in life you wade into weedy situations that you have no idea what the results will be.

Maybe you wade in to mow.

Or maybe you wade in there to pick plums to make jam.

You mean well. You are just trying to help someone. You are using your time wisely, serving others, ministering, or whatever. And you end up attacked by nasty bites--

criticisms, disagreements, scorn, derision, backfires, backbiting, malice, misunderstandings.

They usually come after the fact, because typically people won't criticize you to your face, but behind your back, and the pain hits you later, like chigger bites. A delayed reaction.

You could start counting the issues, like I counted my bites.

Eighteen or more of them. (Last year Jonathan had about 80 or more.)

And you could start paying attention to them and scratching them, like that is going to help.

What I learned was that literally every touch made chigger bites worse.

The best way to deal with a pesky chigger bite was to ignore it--

to literally give your attention to NOT scratching that hurtful bite.

And very often the best way to deal with a criticism or scorn or obvious hurtful backbite of some kind is to leave it be.

The more you pay attention to it and react to it and scratch it and coddle your bitterness toward it, the worse it will get. It may even become infected.

The only kind of touch that helped my chigger bites was the touch of healing balm like olive oil or frankincense essential oil mixed with olive oil. That was the only thing that helped.

Not my own efforts at healing the pain, but applying balm, something outside myself.

It wasn't in my power to touch those nasty, itchy welts and make them feel better.

I suppose any smart reader can figure out where this is going--

We need the Balm of Gilead where the pain has been.

Otherwise, we'll find it true what Jonathan saw on Facebook a while back and told me about:

"If you never heal from what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you."

I write these kind of things not just to encourage or share with others, but sometimes because in the very act of writing these things, I find healing for hurts of my own.

Healing for inner pain I am completely unable to bear or medicate or suffocate on my own. 

Pain that requires the Balm of Gilead so that I don't "bleed on people who haven't cut me."

The Balm of Gilead Whose healing power makes it possible to forgive things in people who see no need to ask forgiveness, who are totally blind to the ways they have wounded or bitten in tender areas of "thin skin," like the chiggers do, finding areas behind knees or around ankles where the skin is thin, where it is easy to bite and the bite will be more irritable to the person;

and finding areas where the clothing fits tightly, such as the top of socks or around the waist--

places which we normally keep covered,

 areas of our lives that we just don't expose to others.

Those are great places for chiggers to make their low blows and leave you suffering.

When scratching, or ignoring, or leaving it be won't completely work,

my friend, you and I need the Balm of Gilead.

Chigger bites don't respond to preaching. Don't preach to chigger bites to just forgive and forget.

Apply Balm.

It just takes a drop on each bite.

Healing balm dropped in every drop of blood off Calvary's tree--the blood shed not just for our pardon, but for our healing.

Take time to dab a little on every single bite.

Take the chigger bites to Jesus. Name them one by one, and then just give Him the whole itchy, hot, maddening lot of them..

It is the Balm that works wonders.