Scars
Dan Kunz
If you read my last blog about a tragic death in our family recently, you may appreciate my current dilemma. Should I continue to write about the journey our family is on, or should I let it go and write about something completely different?
After discussing it with a couple of my trusted friends, I decided to continue to share the journey for a while longer, hoping our story may benefit someone else along the way. Longfellow once wrote about the idea in his poem entitled, “A Psalm of Life”. In the poem, he proposes that if someone is shipwrecked and sees another’s footprints, they may take heart and not give up hope of rescue. Maybe someone will see our footprints.
More than ten years ago, after a “silent” heart attack, I was one of the first people in this part of Wisconsin to undergo a “minimally invasive” heart surgery. Instead of opening my chest cavity to replace an artery, the doctor was able to make a much smaller incision in my left chest, to do the work needed. To this day, I still have a “smiley face” under my left breast, a reminder of my life-saving surgery.
Over the years, everyone experiences some type of physical trauma to his body. Cuts of one sort or another are common. Quint and Hooper, in the movie, Jaws, have a whole scene comparing the scars from their various wounds (including Quint’s broken heart). We know the saying, “Time heals all wounds”, is not true. It doesn’t. It may very well soften all wounds, but it doesn’t heal them completely. For example, although the incision from my heart surgery gradually healed, it was very slow and still has some sensitivity.
Sometimes we think of scars as having no feeling, but that’s because nerves may have been cut originally. As the nerves regenerate, scar tissue can become sensitive to the touch. Such is many times the case with the loss of a loved one, or some other trauma which a person experiences in life. The original pain and heartache is an open wound, a throbbing, aching, ever-present pain. As time goes by, the wound heals and the pain is less intense. It may not, and probably will not, ever go away completely. Just like the smiley face on my chest, if it’s touched or brushed against in just the right place, at just the right time, it stings or burns a little.
So it is with our bruised and aching hearts. Even years later, a particular sight, or smell, or sound may cause a twinge of pain. Hearing a certain song or reading a certain Bible passage, may raise your sensitivity. An activity or a time of the year may heighten your awareness of your loss. Thankfully, such feelings probably won’t be as intense and won’t last as long as the original wound. Just as any of the previous examples may cause sadness, they may also, eventually, cause pleasant thoughts of better times and better circumstances. We remember “the good times”.
Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese poet, philosopher, and artist from the early Twentieth Century once said, “One can only feel joy to the same depth they’ve felt pain.” I believe there’s truth to that and it’s why we, as Christians, look forward to heaven so much. We are living through the pain and consequences of a sinful world right now. As time goes by, our broken hearts will not hurt as much, but even better, someday our pain and the consequences of sin will be gone completely, erased by a God who loves his children, hates to see us suffer, and will restore us to the happiness of his original creation!
Isaiah 38:16-17 You restored me to health and let me live. Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back.