Beauty for Ashes

I am writing about this now because I am positive I will not be able to think or process once it’s real.

But maybe it’s always been real.

Maybe the tear has been open and raw and real for so long that I’m aching for whatever needle and thread will sew my gaping heart back together so that I can once again take a deep breath.

Or maybe that will never be an option.

I recently finished a book that said this:

“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.” (Little Bee)

I think this is probably true. I have a lot of scars. And for a long time I believed that those scars made me ugly and broken. That because I’d seen so much death, abuse, and hurt before I even hit adolescence, and so much more beyond, I will never be healed and whole. But I’ve since learned that that’s simply not true. Maybe in part; maybe in those days after a fresh tear, the days where your heart bleeds and scabs, maybe that’s the ugly part. But slowly, eventually, those scabs turn to scars. And our brokenness itself heals us. And those scars that remain—those make us beautiful. They make us human and whole and complete. We are able to feel and love more deeply because we have been hurt deeply.

Today I have a new, raw, gaping wound.

Today my friend died.

And I hurt. A lot. I hurt for her husband and young son. I hurt for her family. I hurt for her friends. I hurt for me.

Right now my heart is torn and broken and bleeding and I just want to crawl under my desk and sob and scream at God.

But I can’t. So I won’t. Instead I will write and I will pray, in the hopes that someday my ugly wound will scab over, and someday that scab will become a scar. And it will be one more piece of me that makes me beautifully human.

But today....today it sucks. Today it just hurts like Hell.