My husband was actually the one to notice. I never even paid attention as I was tying our laundry string around a beautiful little cedar tree. “Did you notice somebody carved their initials on that tree?” Like I said, I hadn’t even seen it. When he said it, I stepped back, and I noticed initials truly carved into the side of the cedar tree at our campsite. I looked with a scowl on my face at him, and I simply muttered, “Rookies.”
I’ve been an outdoorsy girl as long as I can remember, and to that I attribute my generalized dirty hippie lifestyle. I love the woods, the water, I truly do see the forest for the trees, because I love the trees!
A few days later, when I was taking that same rope down from the tree, I hugged her. Not a quick sideways come here ya little rascal kind of hug, but a wrap my arms around her, press my cheek to her and lay my whole body up against her. Within about 30 seconds tears came to my eyes and an incredible sense of sorrow welled up in me. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Did you see what they did to me?”
“Yes, and I’m so sorry,” I responded. “We all have scars, life gives us scars.”
I told her for a moment of my physical scars, the one on my shin, the one on my knee and one on my shoulder, chickenpox scars on my face from when I was a kid. We all have scars. And then we spoke for a moment on the ones in our heart and in our mind and our limitations. Those are scars too. She and I came to an understanding that while life really does give us scars, it doesn’t diminish who we are, or what value we bring to the world.
If we are willing to accept them and move forward, then they truly can be a reminder, for those that we are willing to show them to and share them with, to pay attention, to slow down, and to think about more than just ourselves.
Life gives us scars, and they heal, we heal, just as that carving didn’t kill her, it was a sign of someone else’s ignorance.
We too have those scars. These marks we will always have, that don’t define our worth, and are often signs of someone else’s ignorance.
Forever the journey, Anne