Stories from my childhood: Scars

(by Michael)

We all get scars on our bodies over the course of our lifetime.  Scars are reminders of past events, and sometimes lessons learned.   They invoke memories in the mind of the beholder, even memories that we would rather not recall.  My mother has scars on her tummy from whence more than one of her children were delivered into this life via caesarian.  It’s not a pretty site (no scar is), but she is proud of it because of the joy that has resulted in having children.  As I share stories from my past on this blog, it is not my intention to dig up the negative things from my life (especially the ones I hope my son does not repeat), but to point out the positive things that happen amidst the negative, even if only to look back with amusement and remember how I got through it.  My point is that while our scars appear to be blemishes from our past, their stories often provide meaning and explain who we are.

I have many scars, including one on my right eyebrow  that's a result from running in church.  When I was about 7 years old, I had a tendency to run out of the chapel as soon as sacrament meeting was over and bolt to the primary wing (by way of the water fountain) for Sunday School.  One Sunday, as soon as the last “Amen” was said at the end of the sacrament meeting benediction, I jumped up from the row where my family was sitting and started darting through and around the many people who instantly filled the aisles.  Well, I tripped over Brother Thomas’ foot, fell forward, and bonked my head on the edge of the nearest wooden pew.  I got a gash above my eye, and blood streamed out.  I was crying, of course. My mother took me to the emergency room.  Brother Thomas felt so bad about it that he wanted to accompany us to the ER, but he had other obligations still at church that morning, so he sent his wife with us instead.  While we were sitting in the waiting room at the ER, I was shivering a little because the room was cool.  Sister Thomas noticed and gave me her knitted sweater to keep warm.  As blood dripped from my head onto her nice white sweater I could hear her say quietly to my mother, “Oh no, he’s bleeding on my sweater!”  I didn’t take care not to get her sweater bloody because I thought she gave it to me and wouldn’t mind.  Surely she knew I couldn’t stop bleeding, I thought to myself.  But then I started feeling bad about it.  I still do, but not as much because I know now that those are material things and it happened long ago.  So after all of that I got two stitches in my eyebrow.  The bleeding stopped, and the knot on my brow eventually went away, but the scar remains to remind me of that event.  It wasn’t so tragic, but I did learn to not run in crowded rooms with hard edges around.  Now, when I see little children running in church, I caution them to slow down, not because I’m a boring old man, but because I know how dangerous it can be.

I have another scar on my stomach.  It’s rather small now, but it used to be much bigger.  When I was about 4 years old, there was a tree that stood between our house and the next door neighbor’s house.  I don’t know how tall it was, but it was taller than the house.  I loved climbing things, especially trees.  The branches on that tree were not great big branches, but they were big enough for a 4-year-old to stand on (some of them, anyway).  One day, I determined to climb the tree.  As I climbed it I got so excited that I decided I would climb to the very top, and I did.  As I clung to the top of the tree, looking around and enjoying my accomplishment, the branch I was standing on gave way and I began to fall.  It seemed like I smacked into every single branch on the way down as I fell toward the ground in belly-flop formation.  After I landed on the ground I lifted up my t-shirt to survey the damage and saw several deep scratches on my torso that were starting to bleed.  I started to panic and ran inside to seek help.  The scratches healed, but left a long scar that extended from one side of my chest down to the other side of my stomach in a diagonal pattern.  Over the years the scar slowly faded away.  Now, it is barely more than an inch long.  When I got older I would crack jokes about the origin of the scar.  I claimed it was a shrapnel wound from back in ‘Nam, or a result of a knife fight (“you should’ve seen the other guy”).  As insignificant as the true reason for the scar is, I have other scars that are from even less significant scratches, like the one that resulted from a jagged edge of the metal sousaphone I carried in the marching band in high school.  The funny thing about that scar is that it crosses the other scar on my stomach to form an X.  Anyway, I guess I didn’t learn to not climb trees.  I have climbed many a tree since and fallen out of a couple, but I have gotten better at judging the reliability of the branch I climb on.  Sometimes, you can’t let tragic events keep you down.

I sometimes wonder if when we are resurrected with our perfect immortal bodies we will still have any of the scars we receive in this life.  I think of Jesus Christ’s scars, the nail wounds in his hands and feet and the spear wound in his side.  He purposely kept those scars in his resurrection to show them to us as a witness of the trauma he suffered for our sakes.  He said to us through his prophet Isaiah, “behold, I have graven thee on the palms of my hands….” (Isaiah 49:16)  The beautiful thing about Christ’s sacrifice is that we can be healed of all of our scars—both physical and emotional—through the power of the atonement and resurrection.  Isaiah also says in the same chapter, “the Lord hath comforted his people and will have mercy upon his afflicted.” (Isaiah 49:13)  He knows our afflictions, and we are ever present in his memory.  “Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” continues the prophet, “yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” is the promise of the Savior.  As we look upon our scars and remember their causes, let them also remind us of Jesus’ scars, even the tokens of our salvation.  May we find hope and comfort in what they represent:  our ability to be healed through the atonement of Jesus Christ.