Scars Tell a Story …

“People say time heals all wounds. I say time heals wounds but scars are left to remind you what you have been through and survived.”  ~ unknown

Surgery scars, accident scars, stupidity scars … I have them all.  Each one has a story associated with it, which means that part of my life is always visible to the world and a personal reminder of the past for me.  My knees – the steep concrete driveway that went down to my childhood home (and all the creative ways we went down it as kids).  My feet –  the big glass pitcher I used at family parties  and/or at work waitressing.  My arm – the teenage need to have lots of curls.  My stomach – life saving/changing surgeries.

“Scars are tattoos with better stories”  ~ unknown (poster)

Scars show the healing … they could be considered “traumatic tattoos” but better because they have a past, a story to tell.  They can be rough patches of skin, permanently red/pink, others a white line that does not tan,  some fade with age … No matter how they look, scars are a sign of healing.  Our bodies way of moving on.  Scars of the flesh can be tougher then the rest of our skin if the nerves were killed when it was made.

Scars can be seen in nature, too.  There are scars upon the land from wind, water and man. Most apparent in my woods are the trees that have survived fire, lightening, or other natural/human damage.   Their strong, tall bodies tell the tales of many years.

“The scars you can’t see are the ones that hurt the most and the ones that are the hardest to heal.”  ~ unknown

Our hearts also have scars.  Like everyone else, my heart was marred by death of loved ones, hurtful words, lost loves, loneliness, lies, defeat, etc … (some people have suffer much worse heart atrocities then me).   These are the scars that are not openly visible to the rest of the world, unless we make a point to share them or we are suffering so badly that they rule our lives.

Our hearts are the most fragile part of us and its wounds the deepest and most painful, slowest to heal.  It is the heart scars that are the easiest scars to be reopened to the pain of the trauma that caused them in the first place. Once reopened, they can be just as painful as they were the first time.  To protect our heart, it can be easy to slip into a life that eliminates the danger of anyone touching our hearts (at least easily) again.

Since our hearts are buried deep inside us, it is sometimes hard to determine whether these wounds are healed or not – if they have grown strong scars.  The only way to tell is to test them with life. Moving on, risking the chance of a heart wound reopening is something we must live with every day … or we stop living.

Handle each others heart with care …  remember, the heart is easy to wound and we all have very fragile scars that can be reopened inside.

“It’s a shallow life that doesn’t give a person a few scars.”
~  Garrison Keillor

~ by bearyweather on August 12, 2013.