Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.
Save me and I shall be saved.
For you are my praise.
Jeremiah 17:14
I have a long, gnarly scar on my shoulder. It even has a couple crossbars like a jacked-up railroad. The fun thing about scars is the stories behind them. I have an especially grotesque one on my left arm that’s a weird conversation starter. (“Wow, what happened there?” “Oh this? I had a huge-ass mole removed when I was 16.” “Was it cancerous?” “Nope. Purely cosmetic. Vanity, vanity, vanity.”) But I have no idea how I got this new one. Even stranger, I didn’t notice it until just a few months ago, this long, gnarly scar that deserves a better story than, “Yeah I don’t know what happened.”
This is what I want to say if someone asked me about it: You know it’s funny, this scar is a manifestation of the hidden scars that have just recently started surfacing, forcing my prayer and attention, making me an emotional, crumbling mess, and inconveniencing the hell out of my life. But that would probably make for a dismal conversation starter.
The thing is, part of me wonders if it’s true.
With this mysterious scar, I feel more like a character created within magical realism whose spiritual wounds begin to manifest themselves outwardly, etched in her skin, deforming her body, where she can no longer hide them or—worse—lie to herself about their existence.
Something happened to me when my last baby was born. The torrent of afterbirth—which was especially grotesque this time around— was followed by a metaphysical torrent. A few months later, I wondered if I was in some kind of bizarre post-partum depression, when I reconnected with a friend who told me a harrowing story of a car accident that had unleashed past trauma during her rehabilitation. I learned that it was neurologically possible and even common that present trauma could indeed activate memories of past trauma. These weren’t memories or feelings that I had forgotten; it was more like I had separated and parsed the traumatic events out and stored them in different parts of my brain. I can pinpoint moments in the past twenty years when a memory or two has been jostled into my consciousness, usually because of a trigger (damn, I hate that word right now because of how over-used it is, but I mean it in its true, psychological sense).
Since then, I’ve been on this speed train of healing. The timing was right, I guess. The funny thing—GET THIS—is that when I found out I was pregnant this last time, I was justifiably terrified, but really wanted to practice total trust, and prayed for complete healing through my body. This was, hilariously, the most traumatic birth yet. My body is shot, folks. No more babies for this super-uterus. But God was most certainly healing me, yet in a more whole way, a way I didn’t see coming and didn’t know I needed. He was preparing me for mercy. Labor ripped me open, and with that came a torrent of healing grace.
So this scar… It’s a reminder to be honest, to resist wanting to quickly patch this all up and move on. It’s also a reminder that the past is a part of my story, and I’m beginning to see how it’s not a source of shame, but a sign of grace.