Scars and all

I blame Tim for the scar.  The one on my leg.

Another creative idea was in the works, this time at the cabin, the day I got the scar. Tim had bought a sheet of stainless steel, and for some reason it was laying on top of the coffee table, waiting for its final destination in the kitchen. In the meantime, Tim was in the garage probably carving a totem pole or training a bonsai. It was a beautiful day and I was looking for some front porch reading time. My book was on the coffee table.

When I walked by the misplaced stovetop backsplash, one of the corners caught the outside of my left knee. With blood streaming down my leg, I calmly walked to the front porch, sat on the step and called out just loud enough for Tim to hear me – “Bug, I really need you for something.”

It really wasn’t that bad. I guess a slice from stainless steel is clean but open. Tim got the first aid kit and patched it with some type of surgical glue. This was a benefit of living with a physician, but the flip side is that he was very casual about it. I teased him later that I didn’t think he had sealed it up as well as he could have, because it left a clear scar. I got years of mileage out of this incident, and would occasionally ask Tim, “how did I get this scar?” But it is a pretty one, and I have actually always liked it, as far as scars go. I like it even more since Tim is gone.

I have other scars, many of them from very fresh wounds.

When your world is torn apart, if you are lucky, you find a way to heal. This isn’t applicable only to the death of a loved one. There are changes and losses, of all sorts, that can cut us. None of us gets to escape pain.

So how do you look at a scar and see beauty?

Last summer, I signed up for an evening walking meditation at the Denver Botanic Gardens. It was titled, “We are not Unbroken.” Sounds like a great time, right?! Sarcasm aside, of course, I was drawn to it and so were 15 others. At dusk, we walked in silence around the gardens. Occasionally, we would pause, and our guide would share a powerful reading about brokenness and healing, and then we would reflect internally as we continued on our path.

We progressed to the Bonsai garden and were told about a Japanese art form called Kintsugi. I have been stopped in my tracks a few times over this past year. This was one of those moments.

Kintsugi (also referred to as Kintsukuroi, as I later learned) is a technique for repairing broken pottery with seams of gold. The word means “golden joinery” in Japanese. The repair is completed using a lacquer or resin that is sprinkled with powdered gold. The process of repair is not a quick application. The resin is layered with periods of drying, scraping, sanding and polishing in between.

Honestly, as I stood in meditation and learned of Kintsugi, I wept. The concept seemed so simple, and yet beautiful and profound. It was a perfect description of what I was experiencing in my own life.

I had what felt to me like tremendous wounds from various emotional battles that Tim and I had faced together during his last year.  And, I had been cracked open by Tim’s death. Especially now, as I grieved, the old wounds were resurfacing because, how can they not. In the replaying of our life together, I needed to see it all. Not just the joy, but the tough times that two imperfect people have together.

The goal of kintsugi is not to hide the scars and pretend that they never existed. The goal is to find healing as the broken pieces come together and, in turn, bring a new beauty and a new gift.

Kintsugi gave me the perfect visual for the soul work that I was in the midst of. I was repairing those wounds. Piecing myself and my life back together. The truth is we make choices, subconscious or not, and we can cover our cuts and brokenness with denial, resentment, regret, and fear. I was determined to not let that happen.

The scars were forming and how can they be ugly? This was my life with Tim. It is all part of me. And now, it’s up to me to reshape my life into something perhaps even more stunning. It’s an opportunity anyway. If I do the work. The repair. Gold. My choice of surgical glue. I create this work of art. My continuation of life.

Here I am, scars and all. Aren’t they beautiful?