I’m an air force brat, and we were stationed in Okinawa, Japan. I was about 5 years old, and I was riding my big bike with the training wheels, around the block. Our block went uphill on the next street and I was on that street when I encountered the teenagers. A group of boys began chasing me on my bike. I was so scared that I pedaled really fast downhill, trying to get to my street.

As I hit the right turn, I never hit my hand brakes and the bike tipped over. My head struck the concrete siding of the pavement in front of my neighbors yard and busted my head wide open. I was screaming, and my neighbor, who had been mowing his lawn, saw me fall and came running. He took off his sweaty tee-shirt and placed it on my bleeding head, then lifted me and carried me home.

The next thing I remember was in the emergency room, and my mother, a nurse, had told me the usual: “It will hurt, but it won’t kill you,” which is a swell thing to tell a scared child with a busted head. You can imagine my fright, but let me tell you about it. It was actualized in the process of these events.

They had me laid out on the bed where they were going to stitch me up. I was screaming and fighting for my life, because I was petrified. It took 6 of them to hold me down, and imagine; I’m in an air force hospital, where they are in uniform. So I kicked off a private’s hat; and in the process of them trying to contain me, I grabbed the tie that one of the male nurses had foolishly worn into the children’s dept of the hospital, and pulled like my life depended on it. I nearly choked the poor man to death.

Then they put a black thing, like a large piece of felt over me. It had a hole in one place, and that was over the area to be stitched, which was right above my left eyebrow. Naturally, to see this black sheet going over me and being unable to see anything, made me scream even more. On top of that, I was feeling them stitching my head, but could see nothing. It was awful, and left me with a scar on the left side of my forehead.

The next scar came when I was in my early twenties. I was working for the post office at the time, and had developed a hereditary cyst on my tailbone. The docs called it a pyroniral (spell checker please) cyst, and in the note they wrote to excuse me from the job, they described it as a pyroniral sinus.

The first treatment was to lance it, which was not at all pleasant, but unfortunately, that did not get it all out, and it grew back again. Understand that with this sort of cyst, you can’t sit down comfortably at all. The pressure on the tailbone when you sit is unbearable, so you twist and turn, and try to sit on your hips, or sit forward on the edge of your tush and legs.

So I went and had the surgery. Entering the surgery room was uncomfortable for me because you’re in this thin  gown, with an open back. They had training techs in the room to observe the surgery, so that made me more uncomfortable, because they wanted to shift me from the bed they rolled me in on, to the table. Naturally, this shift was complicated by the loose open gown, and my ability to stay somewhat covered in all the important places was in jeopardy.

The worst thing about all of that, was that a brother was standing in the room as one of the observers. I did not perceive anyone there as a regular person; I did not see anything but doctors until I saw that brother standing there. Here I am  having to roll over from my back to my stomach onto this table, while keeping the front of my gown close to me with one hand; and at the same time, trying to keep my back end covered; and I’ve got a big brother (and I’m not talking about a brother in the Lord) standing there observing me. And of course, this thought rang through my brain as I was going under; “They will have my back end uncovered to do the surgery, and he will be right there the entire time gettin’ an eye full. I was so embarrassed.

After the surgery, I had to take sits baths as part of my recovery for about two weeks, to let the wound drain, and then be re-bandaged. This was a daily procedure about twice a day. After all of that, I finally was able to return to work after the stitches had been removed. As I returned to work, I remember going to the time clock, and having people walking up to me, looking right into my face and inspecting me.

Finally, I asked someone what their problem was, because it was so intrusive. Several at the time clock started discussing me, and one guy walked up to me, looked me dead in my face and said, “Yeah, she had a nose job and it looks good.” I couldn’t believe it. My managers had violated my privacy rights and had been discussing my absence with employees. They had concluded from the word “sinus” in my paperwork, that I had had a nose job. So despite the x shaped scar on my tailbone area, I had to contend with that, and try to tell people I had not had a nose job. Nevertheless, according to them, my nose looked too perfect and they were convinced that I had the nose job and just didn’t want to admit it.

The last time I got scars, my son was five years old. For six months prior to this incident, he told me via scary monster dreams, that something was coming; something was going to happen to me. He couldn’t explain it well. He couldn’t articulate it, but almost nightly, he woke from a dream that told him that someone or something was trying to take me away from him.

Being that I have a dream gift, and being that it activated for me at the age of five, I noted the repetitiveness of these dreams, and took them seriously. Since I’ve written quite a bit here, I’ll give you the short version of the story. It is described here. 

After I finally became convinced that I had Him in my life (this was in my early 20′s), I still never recognized that He really loves me and accepts me just as I am, in spite of myself. So I still had the same relational, or relationship issues as before because I really didn’t believe I was lovable. I never had total acceptance at home, and I was a runner; meaning that in my relationships, at the first sign of problems, I bolted. I figured I’d do an exit before my feelings got hurt, or the person decided to completely reject me for whatever reason.

You always hear that God loves you…God loves everyone, but that’s sort of a generalization that we constantly hear. For someone to hear that and accept it is way different than accepting that personally about yourself. To put that into first person gives it a different resonance, and sometimes applying the hope and promises of God is difficult for the conscious mind to accept, especially when you think that you have to be worthy. When you are dealing with institutions and exposed to information from those institutions that dictate “obedience” as its foundation in all it’s teachings and instruction, then you come to believe that when you fail or fall short of that, you are not earning the right to have God’s love and acceptance. In that situation, guilt and shame can cause you to deem yourself as unacceptable,  or unworthy of anything from God, and you might see uncontrollable situations in your life as evidence of this thought.

Since I recognized that I was a sinner, and in this imperfect earthly body, I was incapable of “cleaning up my act,” I guess I basically felt that I could not or would not ever be able to earn God’s complete love because I just couldn’t get it together. I didn’t understand that I could do nothing without Him, because I don’t have control of anything. I didn’t understand that God’s love is limitless, number one, and is not based on works, number two; which basically means that it doesn’t matter what I do, or how I fail or fall short. What matters to God is what I believe…He’s more interested in my faith.

Of course, we are required to strive towards the mark of being more Godlike in our attitudes, thoughts, and behavior; to transcend our earthly existence, ushering in the kingdom of God into the earth. However, this requirement is not the most important thing to God. He’s more interested in and concerned with relationships, and especially, our relationship with him. He doesn’t want us to put up walls or keep our distance when we fail and fall short. He doesn’t want us to have a spirit of judgment. Having this spirit causes contentions with others and breeds guilt and shame in ourselves. He wants to restore us to Himself and others, and does not want us to run from Him because of guilt or shame due to some situation that we didn’t handle well.

It actually took a former friend to convince me. It’s funny that she was the person who accomplished this feat…convincing me that God loves me, because she would later walk away from me in judgment because I failed to rise to or maintain her expectations of me in a certain situation. She contradicted her own testimony with this judgmental position. Fortunately for those who believe, God will not leave you because you fail to meet His expectations, because it is our faith that saves us, not what we do or our works. I think that was my deep-seated fear…that He would leave me because of something I may do that doesn’t line up with His word. When I discovered that  He really loved me unconditionally, and would not ever leave me; when I realized that He would always love me and really cares about what I believe no matter how much I may fail Him as a sinner, I was sold. I absolutely fell in love with Him, and He’s been the most wonderful blessing of my life ever since.