Last Monday found me yet again at Mayo, fourth floor surgery. I had Thyroplasty on my paralyzed vocal cord. This is my seventh procedure in less than two years. Seventh time in preop rooms with gowns, IVs, and wires. Seventh time meeting everyone responsible for something important in my operating room, repeating my name, birthdate, and procedure to each. Seventh time down the hall as the anesthesiologist awkwardly pushes me toward the OR. Seventh time switching beds, adjusting my cap, and being put to sleep. Seventh time waking in postop for a cocktail of meds. The fifth wheelchair transport, pointing to my car because I can’t speak. Add three c-sections to what some of those procedures left behind and I now have quite a collection of scars. On the way to school on surgery morning, my middle daughter said scars just show what you’ve been through. Yes, indeed, wise girl. Yes, indeed. I always thought scars were yet another thing that made us flawed. They take perfect skin and disfigure it, but maybe God really does have a way of taking unlovely things and making them lovely.
Aren’t we all just an unusual combination of lovely and unlovely? It seems like somewhere around middle school we start trying to cover what we think is unlovely, but it’s always been there, always will be there. None of us are completely well rounded. We’re all a little pointed and rectangle in places. I often tell my kids that we’re all our own kind of weird. So, when we discover our people, the people that embrace the lovely and unlovely, we are blessed beyond measure. When we happen upon people that find us lovable enough to cover all the unlovely parts…to find value in the unlovely parts even…we are highly favored. All the people that leave as soon as the unsightly parts of us slip out from under our fashion and fanfare were never our people, and it was good that they left. They taught our hearts to appreciate our real people. To value them. To be faithful to them.
Perhaps the most beautiful of payoffs is that our people find value in our scars. They find them lovely. I wish that everyone could know what it is to sit in silence with someone dear…when all you can do is sit and all you’re allowed is silence…and feel the love loud in the room. I wish you all knew what it is to come home to homemade hearts with words of praise from a child. To have a bell and dry erase board waiting. To have your children encourage you in the face of your doubts and anxiety. Daughters that sit in waiting rooms. I wish everyone had people that want to feed you or a mom that is content to just watch cooking shows with you. A husband that holds your hand on each side of every procedure. People that stand guard with their prayers, ready to pray again at the drop of a text. I wish that everyone could have people as good as mine. I wish everyone was reminded how lovely their scars are.