Beauty in scars

by Anita Kehr, Schowalter Villa Chaplain

By the time we get to a certain age, we have scars. We have scars on our bodies, we have scars on our hearts, and we have scars in our relationships. Sometimes what we really want to do is hide those scars in any way that we can, covering them up and doing our best to forget they ever existed.

However, those scars are reminders of the stories in our lives. For instance, my husband has a scar on his thumb that reminds him of trying to make a kite when he was a boy (the pocketknife slipped). The harder scars tell different stories. Sometimes they mark a time when we were broken open enough to move in a new direction. And sometimes those scars remind us of what we have fought to keep intact.

The Japanese have an artform called kintsugi, which mends precious broken pottery with gold. Chana Bloch, a 20th-century writer, has used the artform of poetry to reflect on it. As you read her poem, “The Joins” reflect on your own scars:

Now I don’t want to break things purposefully just so that “the joins” may be made beautiful, but I do want to see the good that might come out of hard things. Scripture tells us that God is the potter and we are the clay (Isaiah 64:8). I imagine that God is the originator of kintsugi—putting our pieces together in new and beautiful ways, refashioning us through the painful parts of our lives, and healing us along the way.

May you see the beauty in your scars.