Turning Scars Into Stars

At age fifteen a doctor walked into my hospital room. He informed me and my parents that I was disabled. It might last a few years or a lifetime. Nobody knew.

A short time later my parents returned from what they had termed going for some air. They informed me that in spite of what this or any future doctor might say, I was not disabled. I was not going to need crutches or a wheelchair. I was neither deaf nor blind. I was to discuss this with absolutely no one. Not my friends, our relatives and — most especially — never with my Grandmother.

To work my way through college I became a Teamster and spent my summers at hard physical labor. It was work which, according to the doctors, I was not supposed to perform. A month after graduating college I was informed that there were grants which would have paid one hundred percent of all college costs.

Over the years since then I have held several positions. Some were more interesting than others. They presented greater challenges. None was beyond my physical abilities. In more recent years I have sometimes needed a cane for an unrelated disability. It has never stopped me doing the job in front of me.

It was never an option.

Now there is Covid-19 plus my age. The widespread belief is that people my age want to retire. I believed that until the beginning of my seventh decade of life. Then I began to wonder how one copes with not going to work every day.

A disease that nearly killed me, one that left me disabled and alive, was something my parents bullied me into using to make me stronger. Someone else may think that was the wrong thing to do. I was so disheartened and demoralized at the time that I would have agreed.

I was never allowed to think I could not graduate high school or college. It was forbidden to say “I can’t.”

I could.

I have.

Today I am learning what it is like not to show up in an office every day. I am learning what it is like when The Boss gives me some vacation time from working 9 to 5. My work is writing and spiritual consultations. Who sits around waiting for vacation when there are things to do?

What could have been a massive lifetime scar was turned into showers of stars.

Heroes are people who have life challenging disabilities. Heroes are men and women who are battered and bloodied by the trials life throws at them and rise again. Each time those heroes pick up the gauntlet. They meet life’s difficulties with honor and dignity.

They turn their scars into stars. The heavens rain down blessings upon them.

The other day I stood in an over-crowded elevator listening to the man who had bullied his way on talk about how he needed to take the elevator to get to his immunity compromised wife. It had clearly not occurred to him that at least one person on that same elevator was already immune compromised. It had clearly never crossed his consciousness that he was endangering my life.

No where is Matthew’s beatitudes does it say that the selfish and stupid among us are blessed. Selfish people have no regard for lives other than their own. Their foolish self-centered self-righteousness leads them to believe they are right to do whatever they wish. Regardless of the outcome.

Ego is the fire that kills.

Soon enough they will die. Then they will see the evil of their ways. How they scarred others rather than bringing light to their days.

None of us can fix them. What we do in this life and where we go in the next life is always a matter of personal choice.

Your hands hold all of the good and ill of your past. Whether you choose to take the bad things that have happened to you and turn them into good is up to you. Whether you choose to silently perform uncompromising good is for you to decide.

You can turn your scars into stars.