LIKE MANY boys his age, Danny Green started thinking about finding that special someone when he was 16. But it was different for him because what he saw in the mirror told him he was not just different — he was damaged.
Fourteen years earlier, his father was atop a ladder painting their home. In a life-changing moment, frantic screams and fire came from the family automobile in the driveway. Inside were 2-year-old Danny and his 3-year-old sister, Marsha, who moments before were playing while they waited for their mother to return from inside to run errands. Marsha suffered first and second degree burns on her ear and face. With third-degree burns on his head, face, and both hands and second-degree burns on much of the rest of his body, Danny was the most critical, his parents being told at Vanderbilt that he wouldn’t survive. He improved slightly, and doctors gave their guarded opinion that an infection might still take his life.
Every positive update came with a potentially life-altering outcome. He’s expected to live but be blind. His fingers would have to be removed on one hand because there was insufficient skin for grafting. Danny left Vanderbilt Hospital two months later with his vision restored and his fingers intact. His last plastic surgery was when he was 14, and there were many surgeries, therapies, and appointments in Nashville in the years between. Ninth grade and his future were ahead of him.
“Having scars and being different wasn’t a big deal when I was a small child, but as I grew older, it began to take over my thought life. One day, while riding the school bus, a little boy approached me and said, ‘You know what you are? A burnt steak. That’s what you are — a burnt steak.’ Those words sank deep within my memory and my emotions. To this day, I can still see his face and recall exactly where I was on the bus when he made those remarks,” Danny shared. “Later, when I was 16 and riding around McDonald’s with a friend, a teenage girl yelled out, ‘That’s a nice car, but you sure are ugly!’ These comments and others were a confirmation to me that I was damaged goods.”
He was sometimes tempted to surrender to the darkness he believed hovered over his future. But he never talked about it. Instead, he joked and kidded to cover the pain and the struggles of his scars.
But everything changed at church one Sunday.
“All of a sudden, I realized a love was present that I had never experienced before. Person after person stood up to tell of their relationship with Jesus Christ and how he had made a real difference and change in their life. For the first time, I realized who Christ really was. I began to feel His love pulling me in His direction,” he said.
He continued, “That day at the crossroads, I chose the road to healing and wholeness. I am so thankful for the grace of God. As I look back and think what would have happened if I had ignored Christ Jesus that day, I can only conclude that I would have been consumed somehow by the anger and hate that I felt toward God and myself.”
What he saw in the mirror changed, although he looked no different on the outside.
Danny said, “Over a period of a few years, I no longer looked at myself as damaged goods but as a miracle walking. The truth is, I’m not who I was; I’m a new creation. My identity is now hidden in Christ. God has given me a beautiful wife, three wonderful children, and six grandchildren. Now, when I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, I see a miracle, a blessing of God. I can’t wait for someone to ask me about my scars because it’s at that moment I can testify about what He has done in my life.”
Every day, we pass people with scars we cannot see.
“Most people feel inferior at some time or other, and [some] feel that way more than others. Our world is fixated on competition and comparisons. From the moment we’re born, we begin to be measured by some type of standard. We’re quickly summarized as above or below average or given a percentile,” he stated.
“I understand the reasoning behind it, but I also know that each person is valuable just like they are. We’re not diminished because we have a defect or we’ve been damaged.”
We all carry burdens — some visible, some hidden. What the world sees as ugly or disfigured is never the story. May we choose, like Danny, to see the value in each other, seeking the beauty lying just below the surface, holding a mirror in which they, too, see their true worth. GN
