Embrace Your Scars

    For many years (in my experience anyway), scars have been viewed in a negative light. They were only shown as flaws that should be covered up with makeup. Especially for girls. Acne scars, scars from kitchen slip ups, and childhood injury somehow became marks that one should feel embarrassed about . There were moments in my life when I was hiding a few scars on my face. They weren't even super noticeable, but I wanted to cover them up. Now, I believe that every single one of my scars tell a story. A sort of map of where I've been. I'm going to tell you about a few of the marks on my map. 

    On my face, I have two scars. A result of a friend accidentally hitting me in the face while we were planting flowers in the churchyard. The event from my perspective was rather humorous. My friend may not agree. 😂 It narrowly missed hitting my right eye and now I have a little scar there and on my forehead that have been fading over the years. I was maybe nine when I got them. 

    Of course, I've also got the acne scars on my face. I used to despise them. Presently, I don't care an awful lot about them it's only a little mark. Along with the occasional breakout, I've also dealt with some eczema on my upper arms and shoulders. I've got plenty of scarring from that.

    Snaking up the back of one of my legs, is an extremely faded, jagged scar. It was a result of an extreme round of hide-and-seek in the dark basement when I was ten. My leg scraped against an old piece of metal and bled a bunch. The wound happened just before a two day car trip and was hard not to scratch the entire time. I can barely see it now. 

    In the crook of my elbow, there is what looks like a little pin prick scar. A result of an intensely unpleasant nurse stabbing my arm with a TB shot. I was sitting perfectly still and behaving well when she did it.  Now, I have that to remember every time I get an injection. 

    One of my newest scars is on my big toe of the right foot. My two dogs were overly excited on Christmas Day and they began to run over my feet. The first cut open the skin and then the second ran over it to open it up further. The scar looks somewhat like an hourglass and I am hoping that it won't fade. 

    The scars I cherish (yes, I said cherish) most however, are from a surgery I had last year. A kidney transplant surgery.  The surgery left me with two thick one inch scars, a long five inch scar, and one less kidney. All three are on my abdomen. The longest one actually still hurts from time to time. Scar tissue is no fun, let me tell you. I've shown very few people these scars but just about every one I have, tend to have had a little bit of a flinch reaction. I see these as a reminder that God's timing is perfect. Also from those couple days, are scars from the IVs in my hand. Not fun. 

    These are my scars. They are a part of me. Each one tells a story. Every single one reminds me of a specific moment in time. A moment in my life. Times when I was a different person from who I am now. They show me how much I have experienced in my relatively short life. I have found joy in my little imperfections. Beauty in each bump, scrape, scratch, and scar. I hope that you too will find that each of your "imperfections" are something to be treasured. That each mark is something to be in awe of. 

-fin

  Thank you SO much for reading. It means so much to me that you do! Keep an eye out for a post on this site eight days from now (a super easy way to be notified is to follow or subscribe 😉), or for a post four days from now on She Be Fierce 2! If you want to see what I'm up to, you can follow me on  Instagram. I am trying to post more consistently on my Instagram, and am actually ok with posting to my stories. So go check it out!

Until next time,

KS

-do you have any cool stories that come with scars?