Their
eyes grew wide with the excitement of being in control, sort of, of the
little explosion of color and light bursting out of a skinny stick.
Then Chara turned away from me just as a spark ignited her
flowing cotton dress, and it took a moment to realize that she was
screeching not from delight any more but from terror. John was quick...
he turned on the hose and squirted her, rolling her on the ground to
extinguish the flames. But the damage was done, and she kept screaming
as we, two novice parents tried to figure out what to do. John has
always been better at emergencies and he filled the tub with water and
dunked Chara. He called a friend who was an experienced paramedic, who told us to go to the emergency room.
My mind was numb with guilt, after all I had given her the sparkler,
and fear of what would happen. John managed to drive us to the hospital
where it felt like a desperately long time until she was seen by a
doctor. My mind still reeled with the unknown, as he started scraping
the last remnants of fabric from her charred skin. Watching her cry was
incredibly agonizing as I faced the cavernous possibility that I might
lose her.
Then I overheard the doctor talking to a nurse who came in to assist him. He said the words, "second degree burns..."
Second degree burns? I didn't know much but I knew that people have
survived second degree burns! I threw off the smothering fear and
became empowered to comfort my little girl, who WAS going to live. One
of the most crucial shifts for me was knowing that the trauma had a
name and a recovery plan. I had never dealt with burns like that
before, but I was more than willing to leap on to the experience of
people who had.
The next days and weeks still had a difficult regime of changing
the dressing, and the gradual miracle of new flesh, but for me it was a
path that I now believed had a happy ending, and I could take each step
as it came. Chara still has a scar, but her belly healed and she has even been known to hold a sparkler.
In marriage there are unexpected explosions, that leave emotional scars
and painfully charred parts of our being. We make accusations, and do
things that hurt each other. Sometimes I talk to couples who feel like
I did in that emergency room two decades ago.... the injury is
terminal. The backlog of lost trust, and stonewalling seem too
overwhelming for this marriage to survive. They feel as if they know no
one who has ever sustained such injury and healed.
But there is a voice of hope from someone who has offered us genuine healing.
Psalm 30:2
O LORD my God, I called to you for help and you healed me.
Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
Psalm 147:3
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
In fact there is a name for a breach of marital health. It is
called a cold. I like that there is a name, and that there is a
strategy for recovery. The book Conjugial Love has a chapter on colds,
not unlike the chapter in my home health reference books for the aches
and fevers of childhood illness. Having a chapter in black and white
does something to erode my sense of self pity and loneliness, when I
am overwhelmed by a child wheezing in the night. There is comfort in
knowing not only that someone cared enough to articulate what an
anxious parent can do, but that countless other mothers have opened to
this page in their own moments of desperation... and seen their child
live to smile again.
The Lord has written down His prescription for colds in marriage, not
only because He suspects you may come down with one, but because He
wants to assure you that you are not alone. Husbands and wives without
number have found their marriages wheezing in the night, and wondered
if their relationship would live to see the dawn.
One of the blessings of a scar is that it reminds you, for as long as
you tread this earth, that you will heal. You can sustain fire, and
fear, and walk again. There are couples living among us who carry
scars, tucked beneath their breast pockets. They have endured loss,
outlived the darkness and smiled again. I am grateful to walk in their
wake.
