I have scars. A lot of them. I played football for a long time, I have numerous cuts on my arms and legs, and one great one on my chin. During hitting drills before one football game, a teammate hit his helmet into my chest which slid up into my chin under my facemask. It was the first of two cuts on my chin. The second came from a bowling... incident... I was out with my sister one night and I dove onto a lane and the design on my shirt was not the kind that slipped on a bowling lane. It caught and I hit my face on the lane, splitting open my chin. I ended the night with a trip to the emergency room and 3 stitches in my chin. I now have a scar next to another scar on my chin.
My days running hurdles left me with a lot of trips to Idaho and Seattle. Hurdles really weren't just an event that I did, they pretty much ruled my identity for years. When I lost that, I guess I always felt like I lost a piece of myself. From those days, I still carry several scars on my legs from breaking hurdles and trying to break myself in the process. My knees carry the brunt of these scars and reached a point where even today I feel very little pain in the skin on my knees.
Next, I have bunches of scars that people can't see. Some still physical, many spiritual, and still bunches more that are emotional. An X-ray of my hands might show calcium deposits in my hands that I can feel worse than ever when it's cold. Like this time of year.
Some scars there is just no way to explain. You are raised a certain way, and eventually someone doesn't like who you are. They make fun of your hair, your voice, you eye color, that you're too tall, that you're too short, pretty much kids are jerks to each other. Take one that was far too skinny and very sensitive (cries a lot), that's a recipe for disaster. I was mocked from as early as I can remember and by middle school I had deadened my emotions so much there's no other way to describe it other than broken. But reputations carry on. In high school I was still made fun of as a cry baby and I don't remember crying 5 times in high school.
Carrying on a little more. I've been in and out of bad relationships my whole life. None of them have been the least bit fulfilling to me except one, my relationship with God. When I returned to church about a year ago I wasn't mocked for my past, people could see past who I used to be. For the first time I could see what it meant to be a new creation. God took all my scars and all my pain upon himself and simply made it... go away. I still carry the scars of a past that is no long my life, but with God all things are fixed. I'm not a broken half human, I can cry again, upon occasion, and I feel more complete as an adult then I ever did as a kid. Scars don't go away, but with God the pain is no longer there.
