When my son Brad was in his early teens, he had a barefoot encounter with a stack of landscaping rocks that Matt had placed in our garage until he had time to put them around a flower bed he had designed for our backyard. I won't share all the details of that evening other than to say that Brad sliced his foot on the rocks, almost fainted in the ER, got several stitches and was on crutches for a while. Brad's a lot like me when it comes to storytelling, so it didn't take long at all for him to dub the story of that night's calamity "The Legend of Scarfoot." I can't begin to remember how many times I told the story of old Scarfoot when I used to speak at women's events, but it was definitely one of the gals' favorites for sure. The weird thing is that every other foot injury Brad's had since the landscaping rock run-in has been on ... yep, you guessed it ... Scarfoot. In fact, when I saw Brad last weekend, he was wearing flip-flops and sporting a nasty-looking injured toenail on poor Scarfoot ... something about a basketball game and a metal post. I guess it's true that boys will always be boys, eh?
I've gotten a lot of messages over the last couple of weeks asking if my finger is all healed up from the surgery I had at the end of April ... thank you for your concern and good wishes. Most of the tingling and numbness on the underside of my finger has subsided, and I've got relatively good mobility. I say relatively because I still can't curl my finger in toward my palm all the way, and the surgeon says I may never get my full range of motion back. But ... I'll take the somewhat limited range of motion over what he told me would have happened if I didn't have the surgery all day long. The only pain I have now is on the scar, and it's still so tender that it brings tears to my eyes if I bump it on something. All in all, though, I'd say I've healed up pretty well, and I think having the surgery was the right thing to do.
In thinking I should answer your notes asking about my finger, it's made me think a great deal about scars ... truth is there isn't a day that goes by that the scar on my finger doesn't hurt. It's almost impossible not to have my index finger at least graze across something at some point during the course of my daily activities. And every single time it does, it flipping, stinking hurts and the pain makes me wince and tear up. Even though I know I will always have the scar, I hope that over time as my skin toughens up, the pain will subside. Over time ... over time ... over time ... my finger isn't the only part of me that's scarred ... it's not the only part of me that carries a forever reminder of the wound that caused a scar to form. I can only hope that over time those other scars will toughen up, too ... hope ... I can only hope.
Here's the thing ... I know from the messages you send me that some of you have some scars of your own ... painful scars that remind you every single day of the hurt that caused them to form. Scars caused by wounds so deep, you wonder if the pain will ever go away. My hope for you is that it will ... that all your scars will toughen up and the pain will subside ... that your hearts will heal.
“The best people all have some kind of scar.” --- Kiera Cass
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