I have a scar on my index finger from a car accident back in 1996. One minute,
my cute Isuzu trooper was upright and cruising down a road in northern Minnesota and the next I was skating across glare ice until I landed upside down in the ditch. In the sub-zero November temperatures I assessed my situation as I lay shaken up in my now smashed Isuzu trooper. My glasses were broken. I had been in the midst of moving to a different apartment and so I had a bunch of my stuff in the back seat that was now blowing across the snowy countryside. Papers, clothes, a random tube of eyeliner. My right index finger was bleeding and as I looked closer, I noticed a bone, snapped and sticking out of the skin. I observed it thinking, “Hmmm…I would think that would hurt more than it does.” I grabbed a sweatshirt that had landed next to me among the wreckage and wrapped it around my hand. I remember it all in slow motion – the nice farmer stopping to help me and giving me a ride to the hospital, I remember laying in an operating room with just enough anesthesia that I couldn’t feel them putting my finger back together, but I could hear the doctors talking to each other, one said, “That was a bad accident – did you hear her vehicle was completely smashed in? Did you know she works in a church? I think someone is watching out for her.” And the other doctor said, “Oh yeah – well if someone is watching over her so closely, why did the accident even happen?” “Touche”, I thought.
The wound has healed. But tracing the outline of my scar I can still feel the
icy blast of the wind roaring through a broken windshield, the scary wondering
whether my vehicle would explode – because that is what always happens in the movies when a car rolls over, and the helplessness of the moment. Alone, hurt, cold, my possessions blowing away in the wind.
I was thinking about this last week – when the weather changes that old broken
bone in my finger aches and calls my attention to it. All these years later I
didn’t think it would still bother me, but it remains…a tiny, dull ache.
In much the same way, the non-physical scars we collect over the course of our lives often remain for many years, sometimes forever. There are scars leftover from love lost, from tragedy experienced, from abuse, even the scars that we hardly dare speak of because if people knew about them we think those scars would say something about us that we don’t want everyone to know. These are scars left by things like failures, like bad choices made, like shame at something we said or did that we know was beneath us.
Could it be that a part of our healing is to not be ashamed about those scars or to hide them, but to see them as a patchwork that uniquely describes the journey we have traveled? Is it possible that being brave enough to share our scars with others might not only bring healing to us, but to others as well?
There is a little statue I keep on my desk that was given to me by a friend. The statue is of a child resting against a large hand. The verse underneath it is from Isaiah 49 where God says, “Even if a mother could forget her own child, I will not forget you. Behold, I have carved you on the palm of my hand – so close to me.”
It is a message from a loving God who says, “I know all about your scars – their depth, their length, and how they have hurt you….but they only make me love you more.”
Scar Tissue
by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Scar tissue that I wish you saw
Sarcastic Mister know it all
Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you ’cause
With the bird I’ll share
With the bird I’ll share
This lonely view
With the bird I’ll share
This lonely view
Push me up against the wall
Young Kentucky girl in a push-up bra
Fallin’ all over myself
To lick your heart and taste your health ’cause
With the bird I’ll share, this lonely view
Blood loss in a bathroom stall
Southern girl with a scarlet drawl
Wave goodbye to ma and pa ’cause
With the bird I’ll share
With the bird I’ll share, this lonely view
Soft spoken with a broken jaw
Step outside but not to brawl
Autumn’s sweet we call it fall
I’ll make it to the moon if I have to crawl
With the bird I’ll share, this lonely view
Scar tissue that I wish you saw
Sarcastic Mister know it all
Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you ’cause
With the bird I’ll share
With the bird I’ll share, this lonely view
