Most of my posts lately have been catch-ups; nothing thoughtful or deep, simply capturing the day to day. I feel like I've had a lot going on so it's not like it's been boring, it's just the one let down of having a busy schedule...not a lot of brooding time and I don't like posting too much on the day to day.
Lately thoughts have been on scars.
I have an abundance of scars from a myriad of adventures, mishaps and bad ideas and I really don't mind--each one is a story. I am marked by that moment but life goes on around it and on it. Every time I look at my right shin, for example, I see the time I split my leg open on a rock when I was a rafting guide. I'm reminded of that moment, but I don't feel the physical pain all over. I see it, remember it, and move on.
Late last night I was walking around the UNC-A botanical gardens (as one is wont to do on a Saturday night) talking to a special person about wounds and scars and what struck us is how the physical ones heal so much quicker than the emotional/mental blemishes. We were both shocked at how slowly we heal; how tender hurts from years past remain. And how many we've done to ourselves. Why does healing take so long? Is it because we can see physical healing, can mark its progress and the internal is so much more sublime and abstract?
Oddly enough the message at worship today was about scars--how even Jesus had to be scarred in order to change; for Thomas to believe he had to see those marks. Now I don't remember all my thoughts on it, but it is what I'm mulling over. Scars aren't condemning marks against purity or holiness; they are moments of life, showing pasts are real but not daily lived. More redemptive than I've ever considered.
"Scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the body. So I shouldn't be surprised if it's the strongest part of the soul." --Madeline L'Engle (originally from A House Like a Lotus but I took it from her devotional, Glimpses of Grace)
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