Standing on a Burning Grate

Not an attractive illustration, but necessary for the topic

I had just learned to walk by the age of 1 when my parents took me and my brother (the newborn) on our first airplane ride all the way from Bangkok to the United States. On that long trip across the Pacific Ocean, my mother has told me, I refused to keep my shoes on. I ran up and down the aisle of the plane barefoot, she said, to the delight of other travelers. Well, at least she remembers them as being delighted. As I ponder the scenario, I can't imagine why they would have felt that magnanimous.

My barefoot ways continued at Grandma's house in La Puente, a suburb of sprawling Los Angeles. It was winter, and the heat was on in Grandma's California bungalow-style house with heating grates set into the hallway floors. No one considered that this little one-year old might be in any danger. 

No one, that is, until cousin Esther, who was on crutches at the time, saw me run into the long hallway barefoot and step onto a heater grate. I screamed and stood still with the hot grate burning into my little foot. Esther also screamed as she tried to move in my direction to rescue me. My mom came running, grabbed me up, raced out the back door and plunged my feet into icy-cold rainwater in the barrel behind the house. And for a while I ceased walking as my foot healed.

As I grew, the scar from the burn grew with my foot. My size 9+ foot bears a scar much bigger than my 1-year-old foot. It doesn't hurt and it hasn't impeded my walking. I remember it from time to time and take another look at it (even though it requires me to contort myself around to see the bottom of my foot), occasionally peeling off a little layer of skin where new cells have replaced the old, still maintaining the scar.

As a child I liked to think about what would happen if I were ever kidnapped. Would my mom still recognize me if I was found years and years later, looking different? I knew I would prove to her who I was by showing her the distinctive scar on my foot. (Yes, I was a dramatic child, full of unlived stories.)

I ponder that criss-cross scar. Through the years I have wondered, "Why did I just stand there with my foot on the grate? Why did I not immediately jerk my foot back and thus avoid the depth of the burn? Why did the scar grow as my foot grew? Why is it that we use scars to verify people's identities?"

The scar of the grate on my right foot has become a metaphor.

Too many of us are willing, for whatever reason, to "stand on the grate" and not move away while we are getting deeply burned by a person or situation. You don't have to do this. There are times to stay where you are and stick it out, and sometimes that is the righteous thing to do. But I think we apply that "stay and stick it out" principle far more broadly than we should.

Once you have been burned by a person or situation and the injury results in a scar, there is a possibility that the scar will grow larger and more pronounced as you continue to develop throughout your life. For those of us who grow our scars, I believe we are complicit in their growth. I don't know why they grow in some and not in others, nor what "aloe" you can apply to keep the scar from growing. But I think the first step is to recognize the fact that the scar has grown bigger than the hurt, and to deliberately remind yourself that the original hurt was smaller than its scar. When you allow your scars to grow larger than they should be in the whole body of your life, they can overwhelm and cripple you.

Finally, we can all identify certain people by their scars. These people tell and retell the stories of the hurts that created their scars. They can contort themselves around to view their scars again, and they will do so often. They have grown their scars bigger along the way. They make their scars part of their identity, so that even if you lost track of a person, someone describing the scar would discover that you could tell them exactly which person it belonged to. For these people, their scars become a core part of their identity. 

There are people around you who can help you to "step off the grate," and who can help you examine the scars and heal from the hurts. And I believe there is a Healer who is eager to work through these people, who can take away your pain and give you a new identity apart from your scars. For human and divine healing, I am grateful.

I will heal you of your wounds, said the Lord. Jeremiah 30:17