1.16.20 // Scars.

Scars.
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How do you define them?
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Are they the marks on your body?
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Are they the small faded white lines on your elbow from a misstep while getting ice cream? Are they the marks on your knees from cannonballing down a trail in New Zealand, losing yourself in the sprint so that the wind rushed in your ears and the unedited beauty of the world pulled you forward?
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Are they the large faded white lines that run the full extent of my back, holding me in and pulling my two halves together to hide cold-hard stainless steel? Are they the marks on my hands from more surgeries as a kid than I can remember?
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Or…. Are scars the marks on your soul?
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Is it the heaviness that we carry in our hearts. The pain from life’s many challenges. The moments that bring us to our knees, leave us weeping for mercy or find ourselves overcome with frustration.
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The challenge is that, by modern society’s standards, no one wants to talk about those internal scars. It is rare to find someone who wants to trace their finger along each large or small white scar on your heart and ask you the story. Just as sensitive and life-shaping as the physical scars, the internal scars are held secret, hidden behind a stone wall of disillusioned “strength”.
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However you define scars, it is undeniable that these beautiful moments of strife, physical or emotional, make us who we are. The person we are right now. The person in this very moment. The person reading these very words.