The Crack

From my journal, 13 June 2025

My sister Barb phoned me last night. She is seriously concerned for me. I admit it felt good to have someone care. I have felt the care of Jesus, sure. But I admit I have felt alone. I told her I believe the origin of my ailment (the debilitating pain in my leg that doctors cannot explain) is trauma not chemistry. 

She then told me two stories from our childhood, about her specifically, that I knew of, but couldn’t have known. And as she confessed her anger and pain and told me how her converting to be Catholic led to her having to forgive these things in her past—and she has willingly forgiven, she said—I teared up. Because her story opened painful memories from my childhood. And it was as if I could see the crack that started the disintegration of my innocence.

It wasn’t some secret abuse done to me, or a single event that happened. It was the terror of our broken house. There was so much violence in our house (and we were bullied to lie and not admit that there was violence). We lived with violence daily. Violence was our parent, the thing which raised us and taught us. The air we breathed was the constant threat of violence. So my innocent skin became scarred and leathery. And I had to develop an antidote against the poison air. And my antidote was anger. I very much became a dog that bites.

I teared up and told Barb I want God to forgive me and to help me forgive all the ghosts of my life—and their memory. 

Our innocence does not have to die on the altar of others’ abuses or their anger. Everyone will leave this world with scars. Fact. But I do not believe our scars have to ruin our love—which is what my anger has done. My scars are not hardened, reinforced skin, as I have believed. My scars are living beings that surround me like killer angels prepared to slay the demons that try to come kill me. They are living things. God help me put my scars to rest.

Roland Barthes recognized a phenomenon in photos that he called “the referent.” That tiny, little thing (almost insignificant to the “subject” of the photo) which grips us inside the frame of the image. Some minor detail that draws our eye and, in which an individual deposits their own meaning.

In this photo of Luna on the boat the “referent” is the crack in the seat back, just next to her head.

Everyone will suffer scars. Little, innocent Luna will not escape this reality. But if she is a rubber soul, if her love is nimble, the crack that makes the scar will not define, nor disqualify her. And maybe because God lives outside space and time (as Jaimee Winship pointed out to me), I can return to the scene of my cracks and choose a different response than fear and anger. Perhaps, I, too, can become a rubber soul like Little Moon girl.

Barb, I dedicate this photo to you: “The Crack.”