“There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature.  A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.”

– Harry Crews

Show me your scars and I will know that you have lived.  Love your own scars enough not to hide them from view.  Tell me the stories of each one’s arrival; and I promise to listen with my heart.  When I think of the beauty of scars, I think of my own — the ones that mark my surface, and the ones that lie deep inside where no one can see, unless I invite them in.

There’s the scar on my wrist that commemorates a succulent stuffed pork chop whose bone sent my knife skipping and left it embedded in my arm.  There’s the one on my shin, forty-eight years old, that recalls the day our station wagon was broad-sided on the way home from a family vacation.  It took years for the tiny bit of glass to find its way through the surface of my skin and leave only a faint mark behind.  Not all scars carry memories of hurtful times.  There’s the scar across my lower belly that marks the birth of my daughter.  There are the beautiful scars on my little granddaughter that are reminders of the surgeries that have given her the gift of life.

When I see the scars that others bear, I am reminded of my own — the ones that show, and the ones that are less obvious.  I remember the wounds that caused them to be; but more than that, I remember the healing that covered over the open wounds and in time left me stronger than I was in the innocent and untouched days before my wounding.

Show me your scars, and I will know that you have lived.  Love your scars and tell me your story of healing.  Touch my wounds with your stories of growing strong; and perhaps I, too, will stop bleeding and know that my hurt is done.

Today I will be thankful for my scars.