When Our Scars Offend

Warning Emily Rant -

I have become very comfortable telling my story over the past few years. I love empowering others by sharing what I learned about myself, my faith, and my God as I healed from the wounds left by an abusive marriage.

The stigma so many victims experience has been something I believed I had left in the dust, but today I was confronted by one who believed that my past still defined me. I was informed my medical issues stemmed from this past abuse, a trick of the mind and emotions manifesting in physical pain with "no real physiological reason."

I was shut down and ignored because I was honest about my past when questioned. This event served as a rude but effective reminder of how our culture tempts us to define ourselves according to our wounds. How we are pressured into seeing ourselves as nothing more than the deepest gash or hardest punch we have ever endured.

I find this to be offensive because my wounds do not define me nor does my abuser have the right to dictate all that I am allowed to be. I will always carry the scars from those days, there will be some tender places, and I may even flinch occasionally, but there is healing - wonderful, amazing healing!

I refuse to cover my scars. I carry them with a certain amount of pride, not so that others can pity me as victim, but so that they too can know healing is possible. I am honest about my past because for some it is their present, and my hope is that for others it shall never be their future.

I was labeled and shoved into a convenient box today. The broken and wounded are easier to deal with, the proper response of pity or disdain is hard wired in our being. We are merely a problem to fix or ignore depending on your temperament, but healed, the victorious survivor is an unpredictable creature at best. We are a challenge to the world, declaring that we will not be destroyed or controlled by another. We force those around us to grapple with possibility that one must take responsibility for their lives and actions because we did. In the midst of doubt, pain, and fear we chose to become someone greater than our wounds. We rob others of the excuse not to do the same with their unbroken lives.