Scars

This post was written a few years ago and never published. This blog has been hard to start and I am often floundering over whether I should, but lately I have had the feeling that it's time. The challenges of our days are bringing trials to the forefronts of conversations. Wounds are fresh and scars will remain from the trials we are currently passing through as individuals, communities, nationally, and globally.

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I've been thinking about Scars a lot lately. You see, I chose the name for this blog based around scars. What is a scar? In the online dictionary it defines scars as: "a mark left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn, or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed." Another wording it also gives is: "a mark left on something following damage of some kind."

When I first think of scars, I think of my son, Thomas. His short life was marked with scars. He had 4 open heart surgeries, 2 other comparatively 'minor' surgeries, multiple accesses to IV's, arteries, drainage tubes to the chest cavities, and other incisions. His scars were emotionally hard to see, hard to live through as his mother, and I often wished they could be my own and not his. His scars were visible and bold--his "zipper" scar right up his chest was there from 10 days old onward.

Thomas just under 1 year old.

His scarring was never alone though--the scars I saw on him and the pain I lived through as a mother separated from my children at home, watching my youngest suffer, and ultimately losing him left scars on me too--scars on my heart and scars in my mind. Scars on his brothers-death and loss became a part of their life before the oldest was even 7 years old.

I am learning that scars are not all 'bad'. The decisions that my husband and I made with our young son were made in faith and hope that he would one day come home and grow up with his brothers. This is a blog about "scars:" the trials and challenges that we go through in life will often cause wounds that leave scars behind. They never fully go away, and frankly, after all I have learned I don't want them to. They have become a symbol to me: strength, courage, faith, resilience, determination, enduring to the end... These are the results of the scars I bear, and I would gladly keep them!