Reopening and Healing Old Wounds - No, This is not for you.

I have been quoted as saying that I have a high tolerance for pain but I don't suffer well. Those who have endured intense, prolonged emotional pain, the visceral wrenching that occurs when emotions take on a life of their own and torture our physical being will understand more of what I say here, especially if they handled the pain as poorly as I have.

When I was a young man, and fairly wild, my father told me, "You can be young only once, but you can be immature all your life."I don't think I gave him a smart-alec reply, but in my mind I said, "Far out!" and then proceeded to pick up the gauntlet in my quest to remain immature. I state the obvious when I say that was not his intent.

It takes maturity to handle real pain, either physical or emotional. The temptation to lash out, especially at the source of the pain, takes maturity to overcome. I think this is why domestic violence is on the rise, a level of immaturity that grows with each generation. Even more startling is the rise in injuries inflicted by women on men. Apparently, I was not the only person who grew up unable to handle pain, and thank God I never had to resort to inflicting physical injury on another person because of my pain.

It takes another level of maturity to prevent me from turning my pain inward, a level where I have only recently arrived. I still ache for my ex-wife, Linda. She brought out qualities in me previously unseen. She helped me to develop parts of me I never dreamed existed; kindness, charity, generosity, selflessness. She demonstrated a simple belief in me tied to nothing other than the reality that I loved her in return, just as she was. Losing her, losing what we had brought me to a level of pain I never knew existed.

I was burned severely in an auto mishap many years back. As bad as the burn was, I was nearly numb that day with shock and a powerful mixture of pain killers. In the morning after, the nurses came in to change my bandages and clean the burn site, from forehead to navel, ear to ear, armpit to armpit. The affected skin had stuck to the gauze during the night and I was told it would be painful to remove the dressing. Another shot of morphine sent me into orbit. The pain of removing the bandage caused me to lapse into unconsciousness. But this is not as bad as it got.

I had been married just nine days, and my wife never came to visit me during my hospital stay. My mother came but once for an hour or so. On my release from the burn unit, my new bride would not touch the "chicken skin" that remained from the burns. After many visits to a plastic surgeon I became acceptable again, but I did not present the same visual to those who knew me before. I was the same and not the same.

Perhaps this is the root scar torn from an old wound I suffered in my recent divorce. My therapist tells me I need to heal this old damage to grow. My oncologist tells me I need to focus on the current fight with cancer. My heart is still torn. Just who is right?

I think the answer lies not who is right, but in what is right. Linda made decisions that now lead her on a new path. Perhaps she has found what she was really looking for when our paths crossed. I now understand that what I had to offer was more than she could bear. My love and the pain of my addictions, coupled with an immature faith in God was more than she could bear. What is right is that I need to be able to grant complete forgiveness and let her go.

In coming to this realization, a long process that continues still, I have had to endure the reopening of that wound and so many others from my past. I have had to learn to see my part in all these hurts. In some I was truly the victim; in many, victim and perpetrator.

I carry out of those ashes a new man. I am still the same man in many ways, but also new. I learned how to love somewhere in this story I find myself in. I learned how to truly love another human being not in spite of their faults, but because like me they are flawed. And as flawed children of God they deserve love just because they are. I saw Linda's quirks and foibles nearly from the start. But with her my weary heart returned to life, from a place where it had lain tormented. And still it beats. And so it will love again.