Do not make friends with a
hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their
ways and get yourself ensnared. Proverbs 22:24-25 NIV
_______________________________________________________________________
The month
of April had rolled in with the joyous anticipation of Easter, and the first
anniversary of Victoria’s death. Three days after my euphoric worship solo in
church, I was still floating on high spirits, anticipating the anniversary date
to pass with melancholy memories and gentle reminiscing with Chris. The dawning of April 13, 1994 didn’t
publicize an omen of the path that day would take. If it had, I would have
decided to forego the day.
Parker
headed off to preschool, and Chris went to work, leaving me home alone to do
what housewives normally do during the day. At midmorning, however, my quiet routine
was interrupted by a call from a former instructor at the technical school
where I had taught. He was being confronted with charges of sexual impropriety
in the classroom, and the intention of his call was to learn my address and
acquire directions to my home, so he could officially serve me with legal
papers for his retaliatory lawsuit against the school. He droned on about the
ridiculousness of the students’ charges, how he didn’t have a problem with me
personally—just the school—and how he simply needed to print my name and the
legal jargon in the newspaper to prove that I’d been served. I silently berated
myself for answering the phone.
As the
conversation escalated to controlled fury on his end—since I refused to
accommodate him with the information he requested—I gathered enough emotional
strength to calmly relay to him that I didn’t think I should be speaking with
him about the matter. I patiently
listened to more of his diatribe and his reiteration about how he was attending
law school in San Diego and was an expert on all legal matters.
My patience
abruptly disintegrated; I couldn’t take any more. Through gritted teeth, I told
him that it was the first anniversary of my daughter’s death, and that I was
really not in the mood to discuss the matter further. The conversation quickly
ended, but the stress of knowing that I’d be named in a lawsuit eroded my
emotional armor. Suddenly reduced to a state of fear and anger, I stood
helpless and shaken in my suddenly horribly quiet kitchen.
My coping
skills also dissolved as I emptied the dishwasher with only mildly controlled
vengeance, banging dishes into stacks, tossing silverware into designated
slots, and slamming cabinets and drawers for an impromptu, melodramatic finale.
After the performance, I rushed/raced/sprinted to another project to avoid
collapsing into mollifying hysteria.
When will it end? I wondered.
Well, it
wouldn’t end that day. There was more.
An hour
later, I received a phone call from a florist wishing to verify my address and
asking if I’d be home all day. So much
for surprises, I mused.
Then I
thought, How sensitive, as I imagined
Chris sending me flowers on the anniversary of our loss. I was certain he’d
also call from work to see how I was doing.
But I waited…and
waited…and waited, and his phone call didn’t come. And the flowers that might have
brightened the sorry afternoon didn’t arrive until after 5:00 PM.
The flowers
sent not from my tender, loving
husband but from my thoughtful parents.
Reeling
with fury, I hotly confronted Christ at the door upon his arrival home. Being
consumed in and blinded by self pity, I ignored the conspicuous signs of
pronounced weariness and pain etched on his face and immediately launched into
a barrage of accusations concerning his glaring deficiency in failing to
recognize the significance of the day for me.
Before I
could describe the incidence with the suing doctor, Chris
unleashed/vented/discharged his own fury and counterattacked with slurs/insults
about my insensitivity to his feelings,
screaming, “ All I wanted to do was to
forget about Victoria that day?”
I was
stunned. How could he be so callous, so dismissive, so selfish? Yet the
frightening, threatening expression chiseled on his face warned me that there
would be no further discussion about it.
My body
shook. How could this have happened to us? This wasn’t the man I knew and
loved; this was someone twisted by anger and a broken heart. He chose to escape
the pain by working, deliberately obliterating unpleasant memories from his
conscience, while I played the masochistic martyr, venturing headfirst into the
emotional floodwaters and fully immersing myself in the sucking turbulence.
It takes
strength, discipline and abolition of pride and ego to work out your problems
and disagreements, to stop hanging onto your “right” point of view, your
“right” feelings, your “right” needs and humble yourself before your spouse.
It takes
real, sacrificial love. And we weren’t there yet. We were still too tied up in
our sorrow, wrapped up in ourselves, nursing our own hurts, cleaning up the ugly
debris and collateral damage remaining after the original assault.
Actually,
we really weren’t trying to clean it up; we just swept it into a corner, bound
it up with dirty rags and let it sit there to rot and stink.
So,
unwisely, we let the sun set on our anger. We were selfish human islands, still
battered and bruised, agonizing self-destructively in solitude.
Again.
________________________________________________________________________
When you’re tied up in your own sorrow, it’s difficult to see beyond it, to even want to look beyond it to see someone else’s needs. But sometimes that’s exactly what you must do to pry yourself out of your self-focus and move past it.
But you must
also unravel that suffocating binding tied you around your heart and soul and
begin working on the infected, festering wound. You must expose it, be vigilant
about cutting into and extracting the putrid remnants you’ve allowed to breed
there.
Digging
deeply to dredge up and analyze the pain isn’t comfortable. But for complete
healing to occur, that’s exactly what needs to happen. Since I’m a medical
person at heart and by training, let me give you an illustration I think you’ll
understand. At the least, it’ll give you a vivid word picture of what can
happen to the heart and soul when emotional pain is disregarded or allowed to
evaporate into a fog through ignoring.
When I
attended Indiana University, the athletic training staff and students worked
with the cyclists who raced in the Little 500 bike race, a strenuous, immensely
entertaining race run as a cycling counterpart to the Indy 500. This April rite
of passage event was a big deal in Bloomington, Indiana. (If you’d like to
learn just how big of deal it was, rent the movie Breaking Away, somewhat of a cult classic with the Little 500 and
racing group.)
And this is
no ordinary bike race. Dorms and fraternities have well-toned, passionate
cyclists who train seriously for this race, which is set up so teams of four
relay-race for 200 laps (50 miles) around a quarter-mile (440 yards) cinder
track. Thirty-three teams are selected to compete after going through
qualification rounds.
Did you
catch that? They ride around a cinder
track.
Cycling
races are notorious for collisions and nasty pile-ups. Ever see what happens to
the skin when it’s been ground into a cinder track? It’s not pretty, and it
requires immediate attention.
The skin
has usually been ground down several layers and is imbedded with those little
cinder chips. Unfortunately, those chips don’t just flush out with a nice blast
of water, and, if left in, can cause nasty infections, healing difficulties and
scarring.
First, the
athlete needs the area cleaned and disinfected. Then the “fun” begins! A stiff
brush, usually soaked in antiseptic liquid, is applied to the wound in a circular
scrubbing motion. Beginning in the center of the wound, you work your way out
to the perimeter. If you’re thinking ahead, you realize this is done so the
debris and bacteria is pushed from the inside to the outside of the wound for
complete cleaning.
To say this
process is painful is a gross understatement! This treatment continues until
you get some bleeding of the tissue, which further cleanses the area and gets
healing juices going. But the blood itself is also an irritant, so this
increases the pain level. And these aren’t usually small wounds; they can
sometimes spread nearly the length of a thigh and be four inches or more wide.
Antibiotic
ointment is then applied to the wound, followed by a sterile gauze wrapping, and
an ace bandage. Often, the cyclist returns to the race for another go ‘round.
Can you
imagine what could happen to this wound if it weren’t cleaned properly? It
would continue to fester, weep fluids and probably never heal properly. Like a
laceration that’s been stitched shut without cleansing, the wound remains
angry, red and tender. You don’t want to touch it. Or it may look as though
it’s healed nicely, and only later do you learn that the infection has buried
itself deep in your tissues or spread through the blood or lymph system to
other parts of the body. In the worst-case scenario, the patient may be overrun
by the bacteria and die.
And you
don’t want me to go into a discussion about autolytic, surgical, or maggot
therapy debridement when a wound develops dead (necrotic) tissue or a
compounded infection.
The same
type of “wound” can occur in the human heart, mind and body. It needs to be
recognized, addressed, cleaned, wrapped in a protective “bandage” and allowed
to heal. Just like a physical wound, you need to “start in the center” and push
or “lift” everything out to the perimeter and then flush it away. If it’s
ignored or “closed over” prematurely, it will fester, ooze, and compromise your
mind and body.
Remember,
the mind-body connection I’ve been preaching for the last three months. When
the body is affected, the mind is affected; when the mind is affected, the body
follows suit.
Please
don’t understatement it or regard it skeptically. It’s real, and it’s just as
injurious as a flesh wound, cancer or a wasting disease. It wreaks havoc, which
can progress until the body becomes overwhelmed and has no choice but to
succumb and stop functioning.
Make no
mistake about it: Stress kills! And, with the death of a loved one ranked at
the top of the stressors list, you can only imagine what it does to the body.
And what it
does to those around you. Like a dangerous, communicable disease, your words
and behavior affect those with whom you come in contact. You can lift them up
or tear them apart with your words and your actions. Words and actions usually
driven by volatile emotions. Sometimes selfish, irrational emotions.
Most people
don’t deliberately set out to hurt their loved ones or others. Sometimes
quarantine or isolation is mandatory to keep that from happening. But always,
attending promptly, thoroughly to the injury, illness or wound is necessary for
hope and healing.
Please,
don’t wait! Start working on your wounds today.
Let this be
the day your true healing begins!
__________________________________________________
NEXT WEEK:
Malpractice, and the ugly side of medicine…
__________________________________________________
Until next week,
Thanks for joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
No comments:
Post a Comment