“Scars and Stretch Marks” ~ A Guest Post by Tricia Lott Williford

Scars and Stretch Marks

I have my share. Four pregnancies and two C-sections later, my wrinkled, puckered tummy looks like a "dried apricot," as my friend L. once said. It's true.

But you know what? I love my stretch marks. They are victory scars. They tell a story.

When I look at those stripes across my abdomen, I remember when my children were growing inside me, when they were just mine, when they went everywhere with me, when only I knew when they had the hiccups.

When I look at the six-inch scar from my C-sections, I think of the moment I met them, when I first heard them cry, when I watched them meet their daddy for the first time in the operating room. I think about how amazing it is, an everyday miracle, and how blessed I am that God let me participate in bringing them into the world. He could have done it all without my help.

Yesterday, I saw a bottle of Stretch Mark Eraser on display at the mall, professing to take those stripes away with some faithful moisturizing.

I didn't even pause to pick it up. First of all, I don't think it would really work. But more importantly, I don't want them to go away.  I love them.

If I could look at my heart - not the beating organ inside me but the spirit that loves and hurts and breaks and heals - I imagine it is covered with its own pink, purple, and red streaks.  Each one tells a story of quick stretching, sometimes so fast, hard, tight that I thought I might tear in two.

Stretching leaves scars. They tell a story.

What scars are you most proud of?

“Take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying.  A scar means, ‘I survived.’”

~ Chris Cleave, Little Bee

Tricia is a widowed single mom raising two young men who could charm you to the moon with their freckles.  She collects words, books and bracelets, and she believes the best part of coffee is the feel of the mug in her hand.  She has written two books, And Life Comes Back (currently available everywhere books are sold) and Let’s Pretend We’re Normal (coming in June 2015).  She writes about the happenings of life every day at tricialottwilliford.com.

Looking for the Inside Story - A Guest Post by Betsy and Laurie Myers

Photo by Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers

Looking for the Inside Story

By Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers 

We all want more insight.  Insight is defined as the faculty of seeing into inner character or underlying truth. We must constantly look beyond outward appearances to seek the truth, the inside story.  Like the rings of a tree, the heart is hidden.  

I learned this lesson recently at a dinner party.  “I have a lot of stories,” my dinner companion said leaning forward over her plate.  The party around us seemed to recede, and her eyes grew more intense. “Yes, I have many, many stories.”  She didn’t look like a woman with “stories.”  There was no indication in her smart dress and pulled-together look that she had led anything but a charmed life, but there were the stories.  She told of growing up in an Eastern European country and being exiled with her mother and grandmother at the age of two.  Between bites of broiled salmon and cranberry salad, she told a story of her mother, a pianist, spending ten years in a labor camp, and then she told the story of her separation from her own daughter, who was in the United States when martial law was declared.  Three years later, she saw her daughter again.  Time stood still as we talked.

Hidden within a tree, each ring symbolizes a year of life.  In a year of drought, the ring is small.  In a year of plenty, the ring is wider. We hold inside of us our stories, the thin rings and the thick rings. The good times and the bad times are written in our brains and in our hearts.

“I have many, many more stories,” my new friend said as she left, and I knew she had spoken for us all.

May I always look beyond appearances to see the inside story.

Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

1 Samuel 16:7

Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers

www.WritingSisters.com

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Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers are sisters who have been writing for children for over twenty years, publishing more than thirty-five books with a variety of companies. Their first book for adults, The Shepherd’s Song, will be published by Simon and Schuster’s Howard Books on March 14, 2014.