Scars

I have a scar on my chest that’s about 3″ long from skin cancer that was operated on about eight years ago.  It’s faded over time, but it’s still there as a reminder to always wear my sunscreen and get regular cancer checks at a dermatologist.  I remember asking for prayer in a women’s ministry event planning meeting about four months before our wedding to help me find a wedding dress that didn’t show off my hideous new scar. (Vain much?)

I have other small scars on my body from chicken pox, falling off bikes, tripping over my own two feet, gallbladder surgery, my first terrible leg shaving incident, poor fitting but super cute shoes, and other bumps and bruises along the way.

I also have scars that can’t be seen.  Those are the scars that remind me of lessons learned through my own mistakes.  I also have scars that remind me of the fact that I will never be a victim again.

Scars leave a mark on our life to remind us of past experiences.  We can’t forget our past, it has shaped the person that we are today–but we can’t live in the past either.  We can use our past experiences as indicators of mistakes we don’t want to make again, or as lessons on how to react in the future.  We need to take these scars simply as information and move forward.

I don’t want to be the person I’ve been in the past.  There’s a lot of attributes of me that creep up once in awhile and cause a whole lot of havoc in the person that I am striving to be today.  The person I want to be today is who God wants me to be.  I don’t want to be like another person or some fantasized idea of who I should be, I want to be me.

It’s hard to not get drawn into past views of myself and settle in there for the long haul, or be haunted by some unattainable view of a person I would want to be in the future.  I want to be me.  Right now.  Real, raw, unapologetically who I am–flaws and all.  The more that I let that idea sink in, the more comfortable it becomes.  It’s a scary prospect, because I can honestly tell you that I’ve never been happy with who I am…but it is a pretty safe statement to make today that I’m starting to like who I am, right where I’m at. I’ll always be a work in progress to be better than I am at this moment, but that doesn’t change who I am.

I’m me.  Scars, bumps, bruises, and all.  And today, that’s okay with me.