Presence

When the Healing Is Ugly

November 27, 2021

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.

Presence

A Very Monday-Like Monday

November 20, 2021

 

Milo: so handsome. And occasionally? A little ornery. 

This is how my Monday began last week: by scrubbing poop skid marks off the bathroom and living room floors with damp paper towels and then tossing the towels out the front door so that they would not stink up the inside trash.

The fat cat is apparently having problems with his pottying.

My son loves the cat more than the rest of the family loves the cat. (At first, I wrote, “He loves the cat more than the rest of the family,” but had to change that, because it could be interpreted the wrong way. I am certain my son loves us more than he loves the cat, though he loves the cat a lot.)

The rest of us are fond of him (the cat, but also my son, of course!), but honestly, the cat is a bit of a pain. He often bites if you try to pet him for more than ten seconds. He claws at the door even though we have nicely tried to train him not to, and seems to like scratching the couch and pine dresser the most when I am watching, just to annoy me.

One day a few summer’s ago, the cat disappeared for a day. We have mountain lions and bears around, and frequently you see notices about missing cats on the post office bulletin board, along with their adorable, fluffy photos. It’s usually not good news for the cat when its picture shows up at the post office. We hadn’t gotten to the point of putting up a sign yet, but when we realized he was gone, that he hadn’t bothered us for food in a day, all of us cried a little, even my daughter, who was often the target of the cat’s most ferocious episodes. His favorite thing was to sneak up behind and scratch her, occasionally even drawing blood, when she was getting ready in the morning, possibly because his food is in the bathroom, tucked away close to the sink and mirror. I’d be in the kitchen preparing breakfast and would hear her shriek. Not so fun.

Turns out that the cat was not eaten by a mountain lion, but accidentally shut in my neighbor’s basement. It’s a walk-in basement, and she had left the door open while doing her laundry one day. Fat cat snuck up there, was nosing around, and was trapped in there by my unsuspecting neighbor, whose boyfriend told her later that night that he sure thought he was hearing strange sounds coming from down there, but she thought he was making things up. It wasn’t until the next day when the door opened and the laundry was finished that fat cat raced out.

Somehow, he survived a night without food.

My son is worried about fat cat and this new pooping on the floor problem. He is nagging me to make a vet appointment. Here’s the only problem with that: the vet is expensive, expensive, expensive. I will probably do it, but I am already a little stomach sick about how much the bill will be. And I think I already know what the vet will say: fat cat is old, and sometimes the elderly have difficulties with their digestion and toileting. But wait! Here is some better food which most likely will cost more than what we buy for ourselves that will solve all of fat cat’s issues. Also, to be completely safe, maybe we should run some expensive tests, do some blood work, just to make sure that it’s nothing more serious. Continue Reading…