First published in the Baptist Times 27 May 2011
I've been walking around with a black eye and cut eyebrow. Mostly it's covered by my fringe and I forget it's there, till I brush against it or catch sight of myself in the mirror - or mirrored in the eyes of the person I'm talking to. I know they have suddenly noticed, by the change of expression on their face - like somebody watching 'Bambi' only to find it's a horror movie.
Reactions range from sympathy to jokes: 'Has he been hitting you, then?'
I don't resent the inference; I've asked the same question of others, though privately and never laughing. Domestic violence is a reality: wives beat up husbands, adolescents their parents, parents their children, carers their elderly relatives.
Asking the question of anyone is valid. Saying it as a joke says, 'I know this can't happen to anyone I know.' It slams the door on confidences, now or in the future, as painfully as I slammed my eye in the door of the car.
I was a bit apprehensive about turning up at prison on Sunday with such a shiner. Some of the guys have a problem with self-harm. I combed my fringe low and hoped it would stay in place. On the way out of the house, I glanced in the mirror and, again, got a shock. It was turning purple.
One of the younger men who has thankfully stopped cutting his arms, came up to show me what he had learned on the guitar - and several new rings in his nose and brows. He told me, in far too much detail, how hard he had worked last night to drill the hole in his nostril. He doesn't see this as self-harm.
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a man I was hoping to speak to; we had been praying for him for a while. A lifer, he attends courses and talks and chapel services, none of which seem to impinge on his composure about his crime, which he dismisses as an unfortunate blip.
It occurred to me this week that his crime was like my black eye: he could forget about it as long as nothing knocked it and jolted the memory, but at any moment he could turn and catch sight of himself in the mirror or in somebody's eyes and there it would be - an unsightly disfigurement that wouldn't go away until it was brought to God for the healing he needed.
I told him I had been praying for him and something had come to mind.
'Wonderful!' he said.
'Well ... maybe. If you have a few minutes after the service we could pray? But only if you want.'
'That will be very good,' he said. 'I will stay behind afterwards.'
A visiting chaplain gave the sermon. It was on the verses from James about obeying God's commands, not just listening and going away - like a man seeing his own reflection in the mirror then going away and forgetting what he looked like. She went on to ask, 'Are we being the person we really are, facing up to the truthful image in the mirror, faults and all, not creating or hiding behind a false image?'
As soon as the service was finished, the man who was staying behind to pray shot out of the chapel and asked to be let out, back to the lifers' wing. The young guy resumed telling me about his piercing.
'It hurts me,' I told him, 'to think of you sitting in your cell causing yourself all that pain.'
'No - it's not the same! It's decoration!'
'Image?' I lifted my fringe. 'So what do you think of mine, then?'
He looked shocked. 'How did you do it?'
'Not deliberately.'
He put his hands up to his face, with its reddened patches, and said with real sympathy, 'Oh, that looks really sore.'
It's hard to face your own reflection sometimes.
