Battle Scars

Wounds. We all sustain them. Some of them heal completely and we barely remember them, but  some wounds leave physical scars that remind us at once of the circumstances in which we got the wound. Sometimes, these scars can provide a deeper lesson about life or our spiritual walk.

Take the scar on my left thumb. I was 26 and rooming with several other girls. I was putting away the food processor and somehow dropped the blade and sliced off the side of my thumb. I’m trained in first aid, so I stayed calm, grabbed the closest dishcloth and applied pressure. The cut kept bleeding. I raised my hand above my head. Still bleeding. I hollered for my housemate and asked her to walk with me to our workplace across the street, where the heavy-duty first aid kit is. I’m holding my hand above my shoulder and pressing so hard on my brachial artery that my arm is tingling like it’s asleep. But the thumb is still bleeding. It’s been about 45 minutes, and I’m getting dizzy.

My housemate doesn’t handle blood very well. (Though she’s doing admirably, keeping me talking and handing me stuff. But I’m losing coherence, and I can’t seem to get the bandage tied.)  And she’s getting worried because I’m going pale, and my words are getting slurred. She picks up the phone to call an ambulance. I don’t have insurance, so I’m objecting that I can’t afford an ambulance. But she doesn’t have a car, she can’t drive my car because it has a manual transmission, and it takes forever to commission a vehicle from the company fleet.

We’re arguing about this when two co-workers walk in, take one look at my pale face and gory hand, and toss me in the back of someone else’s car to take me to the ER. The doctors can’t reattach the severed portion of the finger, so they trim it off. OW! And then they pack my arm in ice and use copious amounts of GelFoam to stop the bleeding. Even with all their advanced measures, it takes more than 30 minutes to stabilise me.

I have often wondered, what if my housemate had not been home, or what if those two coworkers had not come in and taken charge, since I was clearly not rational at that point? But with God there are no “what-ifs.”

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Or take a funny (now, not then) example. I have a five-inch scar on the inside of my left upper arm, where I was attacked by a firework on the Fourth of July. I was about 14 or 15, and the family was setting off small firecrackers and things. I was standing about 100 feet from my brother, who lit a spinner. It rose into the air, spinning and throwing white sparks in all directions. And then, instead of settling nicely back to the ground like a well-behaved firework, it came shooting straight at me.

I was wearing a bathing suit, so when I flung up my arm to protect my face, the firework streaked straight up my arm from inside elbow to the outside of my shoulder (just below the scar from my smallpox vaccination) against bare, damp skin. I was terrifed and in incredible pain. (If you’ve ever burned yourself with a sparkler, you know that the burn of a firework is excruciating beyond words.)

In my pain and fear, I began stumbling backward, trying to run away, screaming. And over all the noise my own brain was making, I heard the one voice that never fails to get my attention—Daddy. “Wendy,” he shouted, “Do not run. Drop and roll.” I fell to the ground, and a moment later, I was in my Daddy’s arms and he was pressing a cold cup against my seared arm. He had been trying to get to me, but my panicked backward running kept him from getting to me.

The scar is faded now, but when I see it, it reminds me of my Daddy’s saving voice and hands. And I wonder, how many times am I screaming for God to save me and help me, but I’m running away from Him in a panic so that He can’t reach me?

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I have a long scar on my right foot from surgery to remove bone fragments from the joint of my big toe.  When I first noticed the pain in my toe, I didn’t really think too much about it. I was overweight, I’d recently been in a car wreck, and a little toe pain was fairly low on my list of significant things to worry about.  Also, I don’t like doctors, and thanks to the car accident, was already seeing several of them, multiple times a month. The appointments were wreaking havoc with my home and work schedules. So adding another set of appointments and doctors was just not that appealing to me.

But the pain got worse—pretty soon, it was no longer a” little” toe pain. It was a lot  of toe pain. I was unable to put on shoes. I wore sandals and Crocs exclusively for several months. But it still hurt. And then one day, I was sitting at the table in the company break room, and got my toe caught in the tubular steel support. I heard a distinct crack, and then my toe was on fire.

I immediately went online and looked up “broken toe.” Since the consensus was that a broken toe would be buddy-taped to stabilize it, and then the only treatment would be rest, ice, compression, and elevation (RICE), with painkillers to make it comfortable, I decided a doctor visit was unnecessary. I bought some athletic tape and a giant economy-size bottle of Aleve. And I buddy-taped that toe to its neighbour and RICEd it religiously for about three months. I even pulled out my crutches and kept completely off of it for several weeks.  But it still wasn’t getting better.

So, when I got to the point that I could not sleep at night nor walk around without excruciating pain, I caved and went to a doctor. X-rays showed bone fragments in and around the joint of my big toe. I’d been walking around with them gritting in the joint and lacerating the tissues around them for about 18 months. Following the surgery, everything was fine—though I did lose some flexibility in that joint. But the pain is gone.

How often do I endure unnecessary pain, or make a bad injury worse, because I delay seeking help from the Great Physician?

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I have one other physical scar that is worth mention. It’s on my right wrist. It’s a small circle now, but it used to be the size of a dime. I was about 18 and developed a small boil on my wrist. I knew that if I mentioned it to my mom, there would be salt pork poultices and other  unpleasantness. So I decided to do it myself. Armed with a brass safety pin and a bottle of peroxide, I lanced the boil, cleaned it, and bandaged it over so Mom wouldn’t notice it.

But it didn’t get better. In fact, over the next two or three days, it got worse. So much worse that I could barely move my wrist. When I started noticing red marks coming from the sore and streaking toward my elbow, I got scared and went to my mother. Confession is not only good for the soul. It is good for the physical health.

Mother immediately ripped off the bandage to reveal a green, purulent sore. She grabbed a bottle of 90% rubbing alcohol and a long steel pin. She sterilized the pin and ordered me to look away. Then she lanced that boil and poured the alcohol right into the sore. And she worked on that boil until she got all the poison out. It hurt. I still remember how bad it hurt. But she held me the whole time, alternately whispering soothing words and scolding me for not coming to her first. After the thoroughly cleaned the sore, she dressed it. And she faithfully checked it twice a day until it was completely healed.

When I see that scar, I wonder how often I try to fix my problems myself, only to ultimately have to hand over to God a nasty, disgusting mess to clean up, instead of taking the problem to Him when it’s small and easily dealt with. Not to mention the pain and danger I put myself in when, through my ignorance, I try to fix my problems with my unsterilized brass pins, instead of letting God use his scalpel.

Tags: Christianity, faith, Family Life, fear, pain, Philosophy, Religion, scars