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Scars, Perfect Legs and Lifelines

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I have a seven inch scar that stretches from the top of my left hip and down. It’s the reminder that I was born with a broken body. Sometimes, it feels like a stinging reminder that something wasn’t complete when I entered this world. Sometimes it reminds me that miracles happen through the careful hands of doctors and low-hanging surgical lights.

Then there’s the scar that sits dime-sized in the middle of my shin. An excited summer child running through a dark field, tripping on a big-revival-tent spoke. Legs marked by tree limbs, beach skirmishes, bicycles spinning wildly out of control somewhere around the bend in our middle driveway. Dots and lines of scars on my knees from sports injuries, slipped kneecaps, lacrosse in my junior year gone wrong.

I am marked with scars of life. I can remember looking at my friends unscathed legs, realizing that they would grow to have the legs of women that men marveled at. I would never have those legs. I would have the legs of a girl who was broken when she arrived, broken when she ran, broken when she fell, broken when she lived.

These are the things that sometimes cross my mind when I am changing and I feel the tension of skin against scar. I am always measuring my beauty against experience, and sometimes wishing my experience hadn’t stolen so much of who I could have been. And they’re not just on my legs. But I feel them in my heart too. All sorts of scars that make me wonder if my beauty and story is forever marred by the gashes.

I don’t know what Eve looked like on the outside, but I know when she took that fruit, she ripped a scar from her heart down the lineage line to my own. And that’s the one I’m most aware of.

photo by Kristen Rae Photography

I’m tempted to hide these scars, like her. With leaves. With lies. By flashing you a smile and an “A-Ok” attitude before you get a glimpse into how broken I sometimes feel. I cover them, sprawling my fingers wide along jagged edges I can’t conceal.

But these scars? If I trace them, they become lifelines. Stories. Reminders of healing. Reminders of lessons learned. Reminders of protection, foolishness, helplessness. I trace my finger along these white lines and feel the pulse of redemption. There in my heart too, I trace. I see that all things come back together for good.

The best kind of healing is the kind that happens fully, completely. What’s left behind is not a mistake. It’s a reminder that God came near, and His grace took over when everything could have been abandoned. I feel a sense of camaraderie to Jacob, and his limp, and knowing that God comes close and lets us wrestle, and then leaves us changed. 

So as we grow in relationships, friendships, at home or wherever we find ourselves comparing perfect shiny legs and bandaged, bruised hearts, remember that the things that break us are the very things that tell the story of our Rescue. Christ is taking all these broken pieces and making us into something we didn’t expect.

And we can trace these lifelines with our fingers and whisper thanks.

Comments

  1. Andrea,
    I just love this… really, really love this… I too have wrestled with the beauty of pain and written about it.. and questioned it… and asked my self. “Do I want to be saved? Do I want Christ to stitch my life in such a
    way where I will see beauty in my pain?
    Or, am I willing for this project to lay discarded, unfinished because I
    am afraid of the beauty that is my story?
    Or is my memory too long with pain that I forget my Saving Grace? Do I want to be saved? I am
    almost breathless in my answer, time has slowed and my soul has responded with,
    “it is well.” My pain was laid bare at
    the foot of the cross, a messy, stained and ugly heap – laid bare at the feet of
    my Saviour and my soul proclaims, howls even, “it is well” – because His bloody
    side, the holes in His feet and hands covered my heap with grace. ” So thank you for such transparency and words of confirmation. Just thank you.
    Do I want to be saved? I am
    almost breathless in my answer, time has slowed and my soul has responded with,
    “it is well.” My pain was laid bare at
    the foot of the cross, a messy, stained and ugly heap – laid bare at the feet of
    my Saviour and my soul proclaims, howls even, “it is well” – because His bloody
    side, the holes in His feet and hands covered my heap with grace. ”
    So thank you for such transparency and words of confirmation. Just thank you.

    • Wow, thank you for your beautiful thoughts and honesty this morning, Tonya. So beautiful. I’m so glad to know that this post encouraged you in your journey.

  2. This is just beautiful! I am so thankful that the Lord of the Universe has whispered so sweetly into your heart the Truth and the Beauty He sees. I am thankful you share 😉

  5. It is comforting to remember that after Jesus’ resurrection his disciples recognized him only after he showed them his SCARS. If our Savior still sported his, even after he was resurrected from the dead, we as his church, do not have to be ashamed of ours.
    (Also, if you’re interested, I posted what I believe to be a very comforting quote about scars here:
    http://leahhome.blogspot.com/2012/09/scars.html )

    Thanks for sharing this.

  6. “I trace my finger along these white lines and feel the pulse of redemption. There in my heart too, I trace. I see that all things come back together for good.”

    Oh I love this post, so anointed and beautiful! God loves you so much and He is using your transparent heart to encourage others…those white lines are beautiful because the pulses from beauty–reminding us (like you said) the first redemption’s song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4OYpx9Pcgw&sns=em

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