By Ruth Potinu (Book Excerpt from Permission to Mourn)
“I became an unwilling front row student to the importance of properly cleaning a wound last year. I was rushing around one day (as moms of two young kids tend to rush around), and as I came out of the bathroom I pulled the door shut behind me and cut my ankle on a metal piece that my husband had screwed to the bottom of the door. Life in the tropics can often be hard on poorly made wooden doors, and the bottom half of the door was starting to slowly disintegrate. I felt the sharp pain of the cut, and I knew it was a deep one. I was juggling a baby who seemed to want to nurse constantly and a bunch of other things that at the time felt really important, so I did not even take time to clean the cut properly. We were out of Band-Aids, so I didn’t even cover it.
I planned to take care of it—later. I planned to pick up some Band-Aids the next time I was at the store, but I just never got around to it. Even though the cut was deep, at first it didn’t give me too much trouble. It seemed to be healing. I did not really give it much thought, to be honest. But then that uncovered wound got infected. Suddenly a wound that I thought was healing was an angry red, and I could barely put any weight on it. I could have gone to the clinic the first day the cut started to flare up, but I did not. There was a playgroup that I had been looking forward to, so we went to that instead. I was also mourning the fact that my amazing friends, who used to run the clinic we went to as a family, had recently moved. In the back of my mind, I guess I knew that popping into the clinic just would not be the same as it used to be. So, instead of going to the clinic (which has some excellent, well-trained nurses) I dressed the infected wound myself, lamented the fact that my medical friends were no longer a phone call away and hobbled miserably through the entire playgroup trying to act like it was no big deal when in reality I was in severe pain.
The next day my husband was preaching at a funeral. Then it was the weekend and the clinic was closed. At the recommendation of a friend, I went to a medical friend of hers who worked out of a back room of her house (PNG life can be a bit sketchy at times) and got a shot of something (probably some type of antibiotic). But, that random doctor/nurse (I’m not even sure) did not even look at the wound. The shot brought some temporary relief, but the wound was far from healed.
That next week we had an overseas team coming for a visit, so instead of going to the clinic (like a sane person!) I hopped around on one foot cleaning the entire house. Bad choice, I know. That cut turned into a deep, deep wound that kept getting worse until I finally went to the proper clinic (where I should have gone to in the first place) and gave it the attention it deserved. Because I neglected to treat the cut when it was much smaller, it took four long months to fully heal. I still have a scar on the back of my ankle from that cut, and that scar will stay with me the rest of my life. It serves as a visual reminder that wounds need to be properly cleaned and treated. It does not matter if you think you are too busy or just would rather do other things than seek treatment—if you do not take care of a wound it will fester until the pain is so bad that you cannot ignore it anymore. An untreated wound can even get to the point where it could cost a person their life.
Emotional wounds also need healing. They will fester if ignored. They will start to throb and might even smell in a way (through harmful words or actions towards yourself or towards others) just like an untreated physical wound can start to smell.
Emotional wounds may not be as visible as physical wounds; but, just like with physical wounds, neglecting to treat them will only result in more pain down the road. One way physical wounds can be treated is by cleaning them with a sterile solution such as saline. Emotional wounds are often healed through processing the pain. It takes time. It can feel messy. It can hurt, but healing—slow healing from the inside out—can happen, and must happen, for the sake of a person’s overall health. Emotional wounds can be cleaned in different ways. Counseling is one way to process and cleanse. Maybe emotional cleaning will come from sitting with a friend or family member and honestly talking through what is going on in your head. Processing can happen through journaling, writing a letter, or just taking some time out to sit in nature and have a good cry. Maybe healing for you will begin through song or prayer. David does this often in the Psalms getting all his emotions out, even the ugly ones—taking them to the source—to the God who can handle those emotions. God is the one who placed emotions in us, so there is no need to pretend that things are ok when they are not. Be real in your prayers. God already can see to the core of your heart, and He is not put off by the intensity of emotion. If there was ever a safe place to express emotion, it is with the one who created emotions. Deep wounds (even those of the heart) need to be covered and protected from harsh elements. Not everyone you meet will be able to help you heal from emotional wounds. At times, it can be easy to over share with those who are not in a place to help provide wise counsel or a needed listening ear. If an emotional wound is receiving harsh or uncaring words, those words can sting as opposed to being a healing balm. Use discretion with whom you allow to look at your emotional wounds of grief. Maybe it will be a professional counselor, or a friend who knows you well; maybe it will be a family member or someone who has walked through a similar type of grief. When processing through pain with someone, start small; see how they respond and then, if there is peace, begin to delve into the deeper wounds.
Just like with physical wounds, emotional wounds often take time to heal, especially the deep ones. Here in PNG people who have lost an immediate family member will often wear a simple red strip of cloth tied around their wrist for the first year after their loved one’s passing. I love this because it serves as a quiet sign of the healing process. Yes, the person is still functioning and going about their year, but you can see a visible sign, even on a stranger, that they recently lost someone close to them. That simple strip of red cloth is also comforting, in a sad way, by how common it is—a reminder that you are not the only person who is processing loss. You see neighbors, church members, the man in front of you in the line at the bank, all wearing that strip of red cloth. It is like a silent nod—I’m there too, grieving in a parallel space—and it makes one realize that grief is not as lonely as it can often feel.
One way of healing from grief is to allow yourself time to process- not pushing difficult feelings down but letting them out and letting the healing process begin. There is a tendency, especially in Christian circles, to just want a quick prayer or maybe even a miracle to take place so that, boom, healing has happened now—quick—back to the job, the ministry, back to “normal.” Quick healing is not the tendency with emotional healing because the wounds can be deep. There is rarely a fast recovery. Life may, in fact, never go back to “normal,” and that is actually ok. A new normal will happen, but it is likely that healing will be a slow process. Often while that sharp pain will dull, the scars will remain with you for the rest of your life. It is ok to have scars, even scars on your heart. They show that you lived, that you loved. That there was pain, but that healing has also happened. When the skin grows back to form a scar, that skin is tougher, providing protection once again to an area that was once tender. Scars (even emotional ones) are a bit like a tattoo permanently branded on your flesh telling a story of something that hurt, but something that makes you who you are today, an identifying mark that leaves you a little bit stronger than you were in the past—a survivor.”
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