When I was in the 7th grade, I fell off of a four wheeler but I got caught underneath. I was drug about 75 yards down a dirt road. Thankfully, it wasn't as bad as it could've been. I ruined a good pair of jeans and I earned my first case of road rash. –But even that was only limited to my ankle.
For as small as that wound was, it was such a difficult thing to work with. Getting dressed or attempting shoes became a challenge that I never had to think about before. It was fall and so shorts weren’t exactly an option. I’d cringe trying to slide my foot through the pant leg without touching anything. Once my foot was through, I was then concerned about the hem. Even though I had a bandage, I could feel its presence, just begging to touch that tender layer underneath.
Walking through the halls at school was another problem. My wound was on my foot. Unfortunately, the eyeballs of others are on the opposite end. Between each class we'd squeeze through a hall packed like sardines. Other people just couldn’t see that I was injured. As sure as I feared, someone got too close and his shoe hit my calf and slid the entire way down the rest of my leg.
As gross and as painful as you are thinking that might've been; it was. I lashed out. I chewed him, up one side and down the other. The days after, I would hit that hallway armed with my crutch held out like a barrier. I would lash out again at anyone that even acted like they were going to try to ignore it.
The worst part about it was that nothing that I was doing to treat it was helping. I tried to keep a salve on it but then it stayed a gooey mess and stuck to everything. I tried to let it dry out and then it would crack and split. I kept bandages on it because either way, it was messy.
Eventually, I started letting it soak in salt water and then airing it out at night. It wasn’t until then, that it made progress closing up. I don't even remember how long that process took. My scar is so faint now, that really, only God and I could tell you where it is.
As I think about that, I am surprised by the similarities between physical wounds and emotional ones. Some are much deeper and it's impossible for anyone other than ourselves and God to know exactly what hurts.
A physical wound that's left untreated can get infected and in extreme cases, it can turn into what is known as blood poisoning or sepsis. Sometimes, when this happens, you will develop lines from the wound, extending back toward the heart. It is believed by some that this is the path that the poison will travel. Once it makes it back to your heart, the heart will also become infected and it will then spread that poison to everything else.
You and I are not doctors. Our attempt to dress emotional wounds is about the equivalent of covering the wound with one hand and then with the other hand, pushing everyone and anything else away. Only, holding onto a wound doesn't heal it or make us stronger. We end up smothering the wound and creating a place for infection to grow. We might not get physical lines on our skin but I am sure that the path in our life reflects whether or not the poison has made it to our heart.
A month before I got married, a dear friend’s husband was killed in an automobile accident. I didn't know him that well but my heart hurt for my friend and her loss. For reasons that I didn’t know then, I started acting out in some really strange ways. I tried to call off the wedding. I thought of every reason why the marriage wouldn’t work. I had pretty much worked myself into a fury and convinced myself that I didn’t even like Colin. -All in just a matter of a few days.
Of course Colin wasn’t on the same page at all. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He pried and he pestered and to be honest, he flat out pissed me off. It made my soul ache. Colin's face became the mask to my anger. I became so downright ugly. I said a lot of things that I probably needed to say, but they had nothing to do with him.
In hind sight now, all of this was like my accident at the beginning of this story. I was already wounded. I didn’t know how to heal the wound and so, I just covered it up. By no means do I want to shift the significance of my friend’s death, but it reopened that same tender place in my own heart. Suddenly, Colin was much too alive and too near to something that hurt so badly. I was floundering to make the stinging stop. I didn’t have a crutch but I was desperately reaching for barriers.
Thankfully, Colin must be a bit crazy too because he married me anyway. He sure didn’t have an easy road though. For starters, I didn’t know what a true commitment was. I knew that it was more than a word, some shared space and a pretty ring. –But I didn’t really know what exactly I was aiming toward.
The other problem was that I still had one hand over an old wound and one hand keeping him a way. I wasn’t offering him anything. I wasn’t accepting anything. In so many ways, I was simply withholding. -From him, myself and from God.
We found a Christian counselor and I was sure that the man would agree with me that Colin was doing so many things wrong. –But instead, the truth began to surface. I had lost a baby from a previous relationship. I don't know if it was guilt or fear or some kind of self-punishment but I just couldn’t let Colin get too close.
I wonder if in the back of my mind, I held him at bay because getting closer to him might lead to more babies. “After all, you get married and…” Maybe holding onto the pain was the only thing that I had left from what was before and I didn’t want to betray it. Maybe I just didn’t think that there was anything salvageable left in me and so I didn’t even try to piece myself together. Quite simply, I believe that it was a mixture of all of these things, including some others that I may still not know.
Overwhelmed by the heaviness and seeing no way out, I gathered up all of that hurt and wrapped it around myself like a cocoon. I was lost somewhere inside. It’s no wonder that I felt like he was hurting me, there was no way to get to me without touching some part of it. No matter how sincere his heart was or what he tried, everything hit that nerve. There was no safe place exposed.
That counselor introduced me to a bible study about this type of loss. I didn’t even know that such a thing existed. I think about the verse in Mathew 5:13 that talks about the salt and light. Much like those salt water baths that I used on my ankle, that study cleansed my soul. God was using it to bind up my wounds. (Ephesians 147:3)
Healing is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight or even right away. Psalms 34:14 says to “seek peace and pursue it.” It’s taken 14 years for me to get to this place. Sometimes it is still tender but I have a scar now. While God and I are the only two that know the story behind it, I can show you where it is and even let you touch it.
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