I am delighted to be hosting Spiritual Journey Thursday this month. This month our theme change/transformation--a perfect theme for the season. Please link up below if you would like to join us.
I thought I knew what I was going to write about this month, but you know what they say about best laid plans. All that changed after reading Ruth Ayres' lead from last week's Choice Literacy newsletter. And this post is more of a brain dump than an organized, coherent piece of writing.
Ruth wrote about her son Jay and his powerful story about chasing dreams and not letting his past control his decisions. She wrote about how difficult and frustrated teachers can become with students who experience deep trauma. Their decisions and choices don't always make sense. She explains that this happens "when a child is scraped by darkness at the start of life"
The words "scraped by darkness" stayed with me the entire day. After school, I told a colleague about what she wrote, and he says, "I wonder why she chose scraped by darkness instead of scarred."
Of course I have no idea why she chose those them, other than the fact that she is a master at stacking words. But these words have lingered on my heart.
For days, I thought about the differences between the words scrapes and scars. Most scrapes are temporary and can change, but scars are permanent. I touch a scar on my knee, and I can go back to the night I knelt on a needle, and it broke off in my knee.
We tend to forget about scrapes because they can sometimes heal and become invisible, but scars are a constant reminder of pain. I think about the "scars" from my relationship with my dad. I cannot touch those, but I know they are still there.
I believe that we have both scrapes and scars because God wants us to understand the role they play in our lives, in our faith. I know I have been scraped and scarred in my relationships with others as well as with Him.
But it is through His grace and my relationship with Him that I become healed, changed, and transformed.
