I’ve been around men telling their ‘war stories’ a few times. The older I get, the more I tend to join in on these stories. While most of the conversation can center around the kind of talk that rightly belongs in the The Rancid Crabtree Fly-Fishing & Filosofical Society, sooner or later one of the men will roll up a sleeve and point at a small discoloration.

“I got this one while peddling my dirt bike down the dirt path by Burnside’s path. I was eight.”

Now that the time old tradition has been properly invoked, the rest of the men begin to remove articles of clothing as is appropriate to display their old wounds and marks.

“I got these playing football around Dodge Creek when I was 12.”
“I got this when my appendix had to come out when three years ago.”
“Someone threw a flaming bed off Metcalf dorm and one of the pieces of hot metal hit me here.”

At this point, someone is bound to ask about how the flaming bed came to be atop Metcalf dorm in the first place. From the mark on a friend’s hip, the story of celebrating a win over a hated rival became an adventure with a surprise ending. How did the revelers steal the bed used for the fire from a locked room. How was that room still locked when campus police searched it? More importantly, how did the bearer of the scar come into so much knowledge of certain clandestine meetings?

Thereby hangs a tale, as the bard has said.

I think about the stories behind my physical scars and it reminds me of various adventures great and small throughout my life. When I though about what my wife had said to me, I began to look at my other scars as well.

This scar here is called discipling.
There’s a good story of walking down the railroad tracks until the sun came up just talking with a friend. But I never called that discipling, I called that friendship, and I still do.
The adventures behind the scar, though, takes me back to a pressure to conform. Being shunned by others because I didn’t ‘Fit the Suit and having the position of “Bible Talk Elder” created for me because I didn’t look the part of a Bible Talk Leader. There’s sub-stories of being told that I was ‘obviously sinful’ and was prohibited from being in the Christmas Show in order to present the gospel in an attractive way. My best friend was told she couldn’t be the stage manager for the same reason. As I move through time, more stories emerge such as being told to change my name. I was told that playing softball was a meeting of the body even if I was sick. I was told that I couldn’t steady date a certain person and that I should have never steady dated a certain other person. I was told to move several times. I was told that if I did not have a quiet time everyday, pray every day, tithe, and evangelize every day that I could not be a member of the church. I was told that I was a burden to the church, to leadership, and to Jesus himself.
All of these things are the story behind the wound, but not the cause. The causes were that I believed all of it in the name of God and that I allowed myself to feel like a victim of ‘the system’.

When I think about the scar on my knee from riding a bike or the discoloration of my ankle from repeated injuries, I remember the pain at the time of the injury. I was on cruthches or using a cane for the better part of a year because of my ankle. I soaked my knee until I was waterlogged. Through it all, I felt so stupid for being injured at all, especially when I wasn’t being careful or the injury could have been easily avoided.

Then one day, my knee felt so good and my progress at the gym was going so well, that I didn’t wear the big brace to play a game of football, I used the small cloth one, instead. I put all my weight on the bad knee to shift and it worked. Not only did it work, it didn’t hurt.

It was then that it went from an injury or wound to a scar.

I do not understand why all the things in my past happened. I do not understand why I do not just simply ‘get over it’ like so many others have. I do know, hoever, that it hasn’t healed. It is still a wound. My hope is that one day, I’ll be able to point to the injury and say, “Well, there’s a bit of a story behind this one…”