Pain and Healing...

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

--Gail Caldwell

I was sitting in my car today with my hands on the steering wheel and noticed—on my left hand near the base of my thumb—a scar. It’s quite faint now and a couple shades darker than my skin.

The week my ex told me he didn’t love me anymore—I burned my hand on the metal shelf of the oven. I was crying and not paying attention to what I was doing when my hand made contact with the inside of the oven. The mark there was bright red and it blistered up and burned and burned and burned and no matter how I held it, or ran lukewarm water on it, it continued to sting.

I was thinking about this today and comparing it to the pain of being left. The initial shock was gut wrenching and I physically hurt inside. It didn’t matter how much I cried, I just hurt—for a long time. Nothing made it better. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I just agonized and cried and even raged some moments.

With my burn, after a couple of days the initial pain faded, but it was still sensitive to touch. Then it scabbed over, my body finding a way to cover my wound to protect the damaged skin and allow new growth beneath.

I was packing up my ex's things and scraped my injured hand on a box and it slid underneath my scab and ripped it half up. The pain was fairly sharp and intense, since it was just starting to heal. Emotionally this happened many times over the course of trying to figure out why he left and what could I have done better. Things would start to begin healing and then he would say or do something or I would find a reminder and it would just rip my heart open again.

Once the scab was completely off, the flesh was pink underneath and new and a bit sensitive. Over time, these reminders began to hurt my heart less. I found that I was able to smile again, and even laugh with my kids. I was able to go days without feeling sad, and actually able to talk to my ex without hiding and crying afterwards.

And as time continued to heal my burn scar, it turned a dark brown color and was rough and bumpy for a bit. Today though, it’s smooth. The center of my scar is flesh colored and only the outside of it is brown. It’s still there, but it’s slowly fading and healing. Likewise, almost a year later, I am beginning to feel more myself. I am building meaningful relationships, and thinking more about my future as a single mom.

I know that at some point my scar will be so faint I may not see it anymore. Or it may leave a faded mark for the rest of my life in that spot. I am okay with that scar, because it is a reminder to me of the battle I had not only with a hot oven, but a battle lost that I never wanted to fight.

It occurred to me that this process—the healing of a physical injury—lines up closely with the healing of an emotional injury (trauma). If not properly taken care of (cleansed, bandaged and then given air and time to heal) it will get infected and get worse. Just like our emotional health. It is important to take the time to heal: physically, emotionally and mentally.

I’ve gone through many stages, similar to the stages of grief when a loved one dies, and am finally beginning to tread in a space of healing, freedom and hope. There are scars, to be sure, and slight pain sometimes, but overall I feel a sense of lightness that I haven’t felt in a long while--and can look forward to what God has in store for me as I continue to grow and learn even from that painful place.