When the Healing Is Ugly

Sometimes, the healing is ugly.

I need to remind myself of this every once in awhile.

I peeled my finger the other day when I was preparing my butternut squash. I have decided that I don’t even like butternut squash that much. Mostly, I like the idea of eating squash. It is so healthy! It seems like a noble thing to do. When it’s mixed with Thai red curry sauce, it’s not so bad. But really, Thai red curry sauce and coconut milk make just about anything taste OK, because they tend to overpower the dish, drowning out anything else that is in it. I would probably like cockroaches and grasshoppers if they were coated in enough Thai red curry sauce. It most likely makes them taste like chicken.

So, I peeled my finger, and for a second, hoped that it might not be so bad, because it didn’t bleed right away. There’s that few moments after you do something stupid and hurt yourself that you think that maybe you’re mistaken, possibly?  Maybe you are not injured after all? But then it started to bleed, and I could not make it stop. I had to put multiple Band-Aids on it, extra tight, before the bleeding was controlled. For the next day or so, if I moved my finger wrong, blood would ooze out again from the top of the Band-Aid.

In other words, it was an ugly cut.

(Possibly that is too much information. With apologies for the photo above if it made you queasy.)

It’s been healing this last week, and since it’s on top of my index finger, it’s been easy to keep an eye on it. I’ve been pouring hydrogen peroxide on occasionally and dousing it with Neosporin. I took a fairly big chunk out of my finger, so when I put the ointment on, all I have to do is squeeze out a big glob and slap it in there, filling up the space where my skin used to be. There’s a good scab now, and the skin at the outer edges is slowly reappearing.

It’s amazing how our bodies heal through no great effort on our part.

All I’ve done is clean my cut and put a little medicine on it; my body has taken care of the rest. It sure isn’t pretty, though. Scabs are nasty looking things, jagged, rough, full of peppery black and red. For some reason they are necessary. It’s how we get better.

I’m thinking that this is an apt metaphor for emotional healing, too. The holiday season seems to have a way of amplifying old wounds for me, wounds that I thought were mended. I thought I had scar tissue, but maybe there are still scabs on my heart, ones that I manage to forget or ignore for most of the year. It doesn’t help me to pick at them. But maybe writing in my journal, talking to a friend, sitting in silence, and giving myself time to ugly cry will help, much like putting Neosporin on my hurt finger. I am not a fan of this method of healing, though. I want to have my emotional healing feel pretty, look nice, be straightforward and easy. I don’t want to sob during my centering prayer meeting. I don’t want to fall apart.

The healing process may be ugly. Undoubtedly, it is.

But perhaps falling apart is the surest way (maybe the only way) to somehow getting put back together again.

True for fingers. True for hearts, too.