While getting ready for work the other day, and checking out all of the imperfections in my aging face (like most woman approaching forty do), I rediscovered a scar on my lip. One that I had almost forgot. It had been there since my mom busted it, along with my nose, when I was 4. I was throwing a temper tantrum in the store. Her first instinct was to backhand me, which quickly resulted in a horrific shrill, followed by blood pouring from my face to my hands... to all over the floor. It took awhile for my lip to heal, but the scar has always remained as proof of that moment. Becoming a part of me.
The past few years, I've had so many similar revelations. Many things can trigger a memory. From a current day traumatic experience that allows one from my childhood to resurface, dealing with a temporary state of lonliness that awakens the fear I have from being all alone during some of my darkest days, or simply writing about an experience and remembering the way I felt while living it.
As I work through these triggers, I've discovered they tend to leave me in a state of trauma. One I cannot move on from once engaged. I've read recently this would be called Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. For me, it isn't like depression, which I have only battled from losing a child in the womb. It's more like a state of shock. Just like the movies depict, my mind is transported back to a specific incident, that replays over and over. I become like a ghost. Operating physically the same, but mentally frozen in time.
Learning to identify it, has helped me tremendously. And in the moments when I am unable to pray my way through, I've called on my friends, to go to battle for me. I've asked God over and over, why? Why if I had to live through them the first time, must I relive them now? Why if he's healed my heart so long ago, must I feel the hurt all over again? And I've realized that just because he can wipe away all of our sorrows, does not mean that he will take away our scars. They are part of us. They are proof of the pain we've endured. Some visible, others not, but all have a purpose. Just like Jesus did after he was resurrected, we have to show them to those who doubt that we've been to the cross.
Our scars are meant to be reminders from where God has brought us from. They are our untold stories of survival. They are passports to our pasts. Most of all they are proof, that through Christ, we are stronger than whatever tried to destroy us. And they are there to offer others hope. They are not our shame, they are our stories. Our painfully, beautiful, healing stories.
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