The Power of Scars

Every interesting person I know is a collection of scars. To me a scar is a story, a remembrance of a moment where we collided so hard with this life it left a mark, and that is where all the really good stories of our lives live - in those moments where life was inescapable and unforgettable. 

Not all scars are worn on our skin. In fact most of our scars reside deep in that hidden place known only to ourselves, a place from where all our dreams are born or crushed, a place that guides our choices and dictates our actions. Here we store up all the pain and disappointments of life, holding fast to the lessons we have learned in our woundings we navigate this place with delicate grace. We float past the those places still branded by suffering, caress the aches no one knows we feel, and wring our hands over the bits of shrapnel embedded in our hearts and minds but cannot remove in our own power. 

We all have this place within us. None are immune to the hardships of this thing we call life. No one breathes who has not been marked with disappointment, frustration, fear, or failure. Each of us have a story that is told by the scars we carry. 

As I contemplate my scars and how they have shaped me, I am reminded that not only do we have scars we have a choice in what we do with our scars. And we all choose one of three options, and I can think of no others. 

We succumb to the pressure to be always be a our picture perfect selves. Always ready for that next selfie, applying the right filters to minimize or conceal our blemishes, we pretend that the right lighting and angles can deny the power of a scar to impact our lives. So we turn away from eyes that examine too closely or questions that probe too deeply. We laugh it off, say we are doing fine, and resume our pose for the camera. 

We put the scars on display so that all the world can see just how damaged we truly are. The scars call the shots, responding to sympathy, and eating up pity until it is all that defines us. The scar sets our limits, imposes boundaries on who we are and what we dare. Life becomes a series of concessions to the pain and the fear of what pain might be. We cease to live in any other moment than the one moment where we were injured so deeply that it can never be erased. We accept that in that moment pain won, and we stop struggling to be more than the wounded individual we were the pain defined us. 

But there is third option, an option that takes far more courage than I like to summon. More courage than is comfortable or readily available to anyone individual - we walk. 

We walk in the full light day, neither denying or displaying our scars. We accept them as real, but we refuse to allow them the power to define us by single moment of our existence. We recognize we are more than single moment or event, or even a single feeling or fact. 

I believe that it was by design that Jesus returned from the grave still bearing the scars of death. He did not have to. He could have returned in full glory and wholeness without mark or blemish. He could have erased the evidence that he had lived and died as a man, and we could have gazed at him with awe, in wonder of his ability and might to endure such a thing as the cross and emerge on the other side unscathed. But he didn’t!

Instead, Jesus walked. He walked along the Emmaus Road and taught the two disciples he found there. He didn’t role up his sleeves and lament what he had just endured. He walked and as he did so he revealed the totality of who he was as revealed through the Scriptures. He held onto his identity beyond the scars, and he did not let the scars define him. But when Thomas demanded to see this evidence of Jesus’ greatest agony Jesus did not hide the scars in shame. He extended his arms, and he suffered Thomas’ skepticism. 

Jesus’ knew the power of scars to validate and to teach. He knew that credibility lay within the scars, and he used them to empower Thomas’ to faith to the point that Thomas would be martyred in India telling others of the risen Messiah. 

This is our gift from Jesus’ scars. It is a lesson on how to live with full knowledge of our pain without denial but also without fear or shame of our woundings. And on some level we all know this to be true, because every great friendship seems to begin when we notice the scar upon someone else and we roll up our sleeves and say, “I have got one, too.”  Then the stories start - how they got their scar and how we got ours. We roll up the sleeves a little higher and ask if they have one like this, and they say no but they pull up a pant leg and ask if you have one like that. 

We meet at the place of our woundings. It is why a perfect Lord had to be wounded for us, and it is why our woundings matter. The scars don’t have to tell a story of how we were hurt, they can tell a story of how we are being healed. They can give us credibility, and they ability to relate to another. Scars are what make us human, but most of of all scars are what give our stories power. 

~ Emily