first wonder

i've been trying to narrow down the seven wonders of my world, but i have thirty-four so far, and i am not one to censor (or censure) wonderings. instead of reeming them off, i'm going to share one a week, in detail.

wonder one: when i was just shy of fifteen, i received a swift kick to the lower leg during an intense soccer game. while i was no athlete, i decided i was all gritty and hardcore and chose to play out the rest of the game. not only did i have the wickedest bruise in amateur sports – about the size of my fist, and deep purple and green – but because ice wasn’t administered immediately, it didn’t go away for a long time. more than ten years later, i still have a bundle of scar tissue just above my right ankle. it is almost numb except for a slight tingle when i touch it. every time i take notice of it, i’m reminded that i once took a soccer game very seriously. i’m also convicted about my habit of ignoring what my body needs.

i have other scars: more than a dozen burns, scratches, stitches, and scrapes, the circumstances of which i can’t always remember. knowing that scars are quite common has done nothing to change how i feel about them: they absolutely fascinate me. when i see other people’s scars, i'm always tempted to ask how they were acquired. (i try to fight that impulse because it’s led to a few awkward moments – sometimes the stories have been forgotten, and sometimes we just wish we could forget them.)

scars are the marks life leaves on us. our very skin becomes a living scrapbook, and we can read our stories right off our own bodies. there are inner scars, too… they have colour and texture, but are invisible to the naked eye. that underlying ache is always there, waiting to be rediscovered at the oddest of times. there are some people who seem to instinctively know where the tenderness and vulnerability is; they just find those spots and jump up and down on them. just like with tangible scars, we can’t always remember how we got the hurt to begin with. all we know is, it’s hurting again, only different. like the echo of a hurt.

i don’t understand healing – why it is that God pronounces it over my life; why it is that the process seems to be stalled at “pathetically incomplete;” what its status says about God; whether there’s hope of getting anywhere at all; why i only ever notice my own healing in hindsight and from a distance. but i am starting to see that scars have a purpose in my life: they remind me that i am still fragile and urge me to be gentle with myself. attentive, even.

they are a mirror, reflecting back to me the pain that i refused to deal with at the time.

close your eyes and i'll kiss you ‘cause
with the birds i’ll share
with the birds i’ll share
this lonely view
~red hot chili peppers, "scar tissue"