Wounds, Scars, and a Broken Heart

Last night I had a dream in which someone gently touched the scars on my body and asked me why they were there. I replied, "Life gave them to me."

Most people who reach the age of seventy will carry a few visible scars as well as many not seen by the naked eye. Today I reflect on the visible scars and how they might be representative of the emotional scars I carry. They are evidence of both the pain and also the joy I have experienced in my life.

I received my first physical wound before I was a year old, but I have no recollection of the event that left a big raised scar. My mother told me the story.
I was four months old when our family fled Ukraine in October 1943. Our train took us to Poland and from there we made our way into Germany. To keep the infants safe from communicable diseases, the directors at our first camp had a rule that all children under a year must be housed in a separate building, where they were looked after by women hired for that purpose. Each baby was also allotted a supply of nourishing formula. The mothers were allowed to care for their babies during the day but at night they had to leave the building. None of the mothers liked this arrangement. They were accustomed to hold their babies close and nurse them on demand.

My mother and I are in the second row, fourth from the right.

One day as my mother came to see me, a caregiver had placed me under a heating lamp because I had a sore on my left buttock. (The diapers were probably not being changed often enough.) She asked my mother to take over while she went to attend to another chore. Unfortunately, the lamp was too close to my skin, and before my mother realized it I received a big burn. She felt terrible about this and blamed herself more than she did the caregiver who should not have left someone inexperienced in charge.

This scar is my battle scar, a reminder that pain is often beyond my control. I had no choice in the decision to be separated from my mother before I should have been. The emotional scars from that time are not visible but I have a physical scar to prove it. 

I have some scars on my abdomen. They are the result of three C-sections. These scars remind me that joy can be a companion to pain. When I see them, I remember how badly I wanted to have a baby after losing our first child and that I considered the physical pain and discomfort of the surgery worth the joy of having another child.

A third scar is midway between wrist and elbow of my right arm. It is a reminder that pain is sacrificial and worth enduring quietly for friendship's sake. Friends from Ontario had dropped in for a visit with their three boys and I was somewhat in a hurry. I burned myself while reaching into the stove to rescue some grilled cheese sandwiches that were in danger of sliding off the pan. It was a painful burn but I ran cold water over it and didn't mention it to anyone.

I'm in the process of reading a two-volume biographical novel by Hedy Leonora Martens: Favoured Among Women and To and From Nowhere, the true story of Greta Enns. Greta, a Mennonite living during the turbulent times of Stalin's Russia (1941-1976), carried many more scars than I was called to bear, both physical and emotional. She first lost her beloved husband Heinrich, who was imprisoned and never heard from again. Then she and her children were sent north to Kazakhstan, in the middle of winter, where they laboured under the most harrowing of circumstances.

Greta's courage leaves me reeling, especially when I think how close our own family came to experiencing a similar fate. I can only be thankful.

I am grateful to Martens for the meticulous research she did in bringing the plight of these women to our attention. My father's siblings had comparable experiences when they were sent back to Russia after WWII. We did not get the details of those stories, although some of my cousins, now resettled in Germany, have told us bits and pieces. 

The visible scars on our bodies are just a small indication of the emotional wounds we carry from the traumas life brings us. They remind me of Richard Rohr's words:

Your heart needs to be broken and broken open at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.