Show Me Your Scar, I’ll Show You Mine

I have scars.

I got one recently after I cooked lunch for some friends. In the rush to have everything on the table at the same time, I burned my hand as I took bread out of the oven. It didn’t hurt until the next day. A puffy little blister, sore to the touch; I knew it would leave a mark.

There’s more. If you look closely, you can still see the faded triangle between my left calf and shin from the fifth grade when I tried to officiate a fight between two German Shepherds. On my other shin, there’s a scar from when I slid down a concrete bench in the 11th grade. I can still see where I got cut with a piece of glass on my right hand from who knows when.

What about the other scars? The ones that go deeper than dogs and bread?

It’s safe to say we all make a mess in life. It’s only when we refuse to clean up that mess, to deal with our wound, that things get ugly. I learned early on how to conceal what was inside by looking good on the outside. Do you know the smile I’m talking about? Thought so.

So instead of asking for help, the wound in me went unattended and infection set in. Gross and blistery, oozing with nastiness. No band-aid is large enough to cover guilt and shame forever. There I was, going to Bible study on Tuesday and bringing peanut butter cookies to the potluck, with that smile you know so well. Though I was in desperate need of some ointment, I was too worried what someone would think if I showed them how deep the wound went.

Just like it’s NOT normal for a person to show up at the ER smiling while bleeding profusely, it’s not acceptable to walk through life crippled because we’re afraid to seek help. Do you tell yourself, “Just keep smiling…no one will recognize I’m on crutches?!”

Reality is often ugly. Unfortunately the people we welcome into our lives don’t want to know WHERE we’ve come from, just that we arrived safely. It’s the equivalent of taking on this sort of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell gospel!

I’ll never forget going to a Bible study at one of the first churches we attended after moving to Nashville. We met in what seemed to be the busiest hallway on that Wednesday evening. It was, you know, one of those classes. The kind where the curious mill around the hallway just so they can see who walks through the door—unable to grasp the idea that imperfect people attend their church. Anyway, imagine my shock when my good friend walked in after me. I love this friend dearly and could never have imagined that we were on the same journey. Until then, she had never showed me her wound, I had never showed her mine.

Healing often begins when we realize we are not alone.

After I dealt with my pain, I began sharing my story with others. People would walk up to me and whisper that they’d been through the same thing. I could see the weight being lifted off their back because they found someone who had walked where they walked. I’m not saying everyone has to make a public proclamation of their experience. I just think that too many people allow shame, embarrassment, and guilt, and friends, and family, and church…to erase their story.

What does the Bible have to say about scars?

It says that when Jesus appeared to His apostles after the resurrection, “He showed them His hands and His side.” If you’ve read the account, or seen it acted out on any given Easter Sunday, you know Jesus didn’t show them gaping holes with bloody pieces of mangled skin still in tact. No. He showed them wounds that had been healed by His Father; and those very scars were how his friends knew it was truly Him! See the purpose of His scars?

Can you grasp the difference between scars and wounds? Scars come with a story of redemption. Wounds are still in the middle of trying to figure out their story.

I wish you could see my inbox. I often get private messages from people who are right in the middle of a gaping wound. It’s like they’re limping their way to the cross, and no one even notices. Here I am, miles away and connected only through the internet, and I wonder why they’re telling me? Is there no one around them to notice their wound?

Imagine how different the path to the cross would look if we were brave enough to lock arms with our friends who can’t make it on their own.

Today I want to challenge you. Yes, you, the person reading this post. YOU, the person who was wounded but found healing. You have a story…you know you do. I’m simply asking you to become more aware of the people around you that are lame, abused, and hobbling to the water cooler.

Don’t be afraid to ask, “What’s wrong?” So that at the right time you can say, “I have one of those scars too.”

You may be just the person to rip that Band-Aid off their wound and expose them to the greatest Healer ever.

 

 

The Bagman Cometh. Or See-eth.

A quick trip to the grocery comes with a dilemma. Makeup? No makeup? Hat? No hat? I care about what I wear, but not always. Sometimes I take the real me, unphotoshopped, as I sneak around the aisles. If I spot someone I know, I pretend to be glued to the buy-one-get-one free chicken broth just to go unnoticed.

Today I just wanted to get in and out of the store, short and sweet. I didn’t feel like small talk but you can’t escape it there. The people in green are just so stinkin’ friendly.

The very second I walked to where the baskets were waiting, I was greeted by the kindest man ever. Jacob. Older than my father but younger than my grandfather so I don’t know to classify him. Every time he sees me, without fail, he loudly calls to me, “Ahh, my favorite customer is here. Kim! How are ya today, Kim?” Emphasizing my name each and every time. Cheeks turn red; I should have worn the hat.

A couple years ago, Jacob got me confused with someone else and called me by the wrong name. This sparked our friendship. He reminds me of this every other time I see him, and he often recounts the entire story to whichever cashier is within earshot. I play along and laugh at the appropriate time, wishing he would work a little faster. Impatient Man is behind me. Jacob hugs me hello, hugs me good-bye, and I don’t even know his last name.

He sees me at my best, like right after I’ve had lunch with a friend and stop in for some milk. And my worst, like the time I felt the need to personally question the gentleman in the parking lot who flipped me off because I got his parking space. That’s another story he likes to tell. (The time he was dressed up as Santa and walked up to me and said, “How are you today, Kim?” still has my kids rattled.)

This time, between bagging eggs and Cheetos, he pays me a compliment. “Jacob, you are too kind but I think you need to get your glasses adjusted. I look terrible and you know it.” We laugh, he insists, I contradict. I know the guy behind me hears, even though he now pretends to read the cover of Cooking Light. And I know he thinks a little cover-up would have done wonders.

As Jacob takes my groceries to the car, we take our time. This is when we catch up on the kids, his work schedule, and the price of groceries. His breathes like the 70-something-year-old-man he is and I wonder how I would ever know if something happened to him. He packs up my car, hugs my neck, and says he’ll be looking for me on my next trip. I secretly vow to make myself more presentable next time.

As I back out of the parking lot, I look in the rear view mirror and try to see who he was talking about.

Why is it so difficult to see ourselves as the bag-man does? Beneath the dirt and beyond the phony. Past the impatience, beneath the mask, and beyond the organic bananas, to the core. Past who we used to be, to who we have become. Every time we see ourselves as not-entirely-forgiven, or not-exactly-beautiful, or not-as-good as-our-neighbor, we undo everything that was accomplished on the cross.

We were made to walk in grace, to rest in mercy, and sometimes it takes people like the bag-man to gently remind us of that. God sees us bare and undone and loves us in spite of ourselves. Why can’t we do the same?

I think we could learn a lot from the bag-man.

1 Peter 3:4: Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. (The Message)

Tearing Up the Scary

The first time Eli forgot his lunchbox I didn’t realize it until it was almost too late. I got to school just as the second graders were marching towards a smell that, in my opinion, was anything but appetizing. Imagine a wave of relief sweeping over a face. My boy looked at me through tears. “She said I had to buy my lunch. And that I had to eat it.”

I got that hen and her chick feeling, ready to peck away at the teacher who would be so mean as to tell my son he had to do anything, let alone eat that mess.

I never knew my son was quite so obedient!

It was a few months ago on a Sunday after I routinely asked Eli how Kid’s Chapel went that I was in the chicken coop all over again. He promptly said, with disdain written across his freckled nose, “They told us to think of the one thing that scared us the most. Then they made us draw it!”

Before allowing him to finish, I decided that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. My feathers started to ruffle. This is church…a place where we should not have to discuss what makes us uncomfortable. I asked him to continue so that I knew exactly who I’d be giving a piece of my mind to.

“What did you draw?”

“Ch…” He hesitated, because he won’t say the word that scares him the most. “Ch…”

Somewhere along the way, and at someone’s house who will go unnamed to protect their innocently guilty self, he was on YouTube and found the movie trailer of that sick-o doll that comes to life and kills people. I can’t say or even type the name because it has been struck from our family’s vocabulary.

Just know that since stumbling on that horror, he has obsessed over it. If we pass the movie section at Target and he sees it on the shelf, he goes around it, hands covering his face. We banished everything with eyes from his room: teddy bears, nutcrackers, even a mirror. For months we dealt patiently with him at bedtime. No matter the prayers offered, he was not convinced that God cared because his pleas for this evil to leave his mind would not go away. Regi and I took turns laying down with him and singing happy songs as he drifted to sleep. We left lights on. He would sneak into his sister’s room and sleep with her. He would moan down from the upstairs railing saying that within fifteen seconds of closing his eyes he would have a terrible dream. Nighttime was a nightmare for us all.

It even culminated with him dragging his comforter and pillows into the hallway and sleeping for a couple of weeks. Night after night he lay between the wall and stair railing, bundled like a babushka in his blanket to protect him from the bad lurking around him.

About a week after he was forced to draw his deepest fear, I took some clothes to his room. His comforter lay in a crumpled mess on the floor. It struck me as odd because it was never that far from him at night.

Later he said, “Guess what, Mom? I didn’t sleep with my comforter around me last night. I don’t have to anymore. And You Know Who doesn’t bother me anymore!” Remember that swell of relief I mentioned? Now it came across my face.

That dreaded day in Kids Chapel something more happened. And after I untangled my tail feathers, Eli told me the rest of the story.

“What happened after you drew this terrible picture of …” I asked.

“There was this light that they [the leaders] shone on everything we drew. Then they held up all the pictures of our fears and ripped them to pieces. They shouted and we sang some songs and they said I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Jesus is bigger than my fears.”

I’ll be honest. After he told me what happened, I shrugged it off as a cute-little-act done in cute-little-children’s-church. I mean, if my prayers hadn’t worked by now, he could never grasp the significance of shredding his fears into tiny little pieces. Don’t most parents drop their kids off in class with the simple hope that they’ll make a friend and put their quarter in the offering so they can call it a day? You mean my big God shows up in little kids’ church?

While I’d like to say that Eli’s fears flew the coop the same night he drew that picture, it took a little time. It had to so that my grubby little fingerprints were nowhere to be seen on his miracle.

When we try to make everything so perfect and unnerving for our kids, we interfere with God’s desire to show them who He is. Our vain attempts to smooth the rough waters called life means they don’t get to experience Him as Protector, Healer, Provider and Savior for themselves! Eli needed to see the life altering effect that happened when he faced that creepy little doll through the mighty power of a mighty God by tearing his fear to pieces himself.  I’d rather my kids face life with a few battle scars because they’ve learned how to fight than show up to battle without a single skill.

In conclusion…well, I really don’t how to conclude. This was intended to be a post on why I’m thankful for the Pastor Bill’s and Pastor Ian’s, the Brittany’s and the Amy’s, and all the others that call my kids by their name. Who pray for them. Who make them feel welcome every time they arrive. Who make church fun. And relevant. Who care enough to provide their lives as an example week after week. Who put up with chatty teenage girls who’d rather talk than pray. And who understand enough to show these kids that the same God who cares about mortgages and heart conditions is the same God who cares about boogeymen and midterms.

But truly this post is about what I’ve learned from my own children…again. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some pictures of my own to draw. And a lot of tearing up to do.