Scars

8^th Grade. Art class. Nail guns and Junior High boys. Disaster waiting to happen.

Day One: Mrs. Hawkins has us doing a project for the upcoming school play. Wisely, she has a few of the more trustworthy students using the nail guns. Definitely not Mike* and Darren*. These are the two class clowns. The classic example of an 8^th grade boys who have an overbalanced testosterone to brain ratio. Mike is a bully, malicious and obnoxious. Darren is his follower, mostly stupid, really ugly, and occasionally mean.

Day Two. Mrs. Hawkins is out sick. The substitute teacher lets Mike and Darren use the nail guns. Mistake Number One. Then, she leaves the room to get more supplies. Mistake Number Two. Mike discovers that if you unplug the nail gun, it retains enough power to shoot the nail out lightly. He proceeds to shoot a nail into the skin on the back of the hand. It has just enough force to enter the skin and hang there. Mike then goes about terrorizing the girls with the nail in his skin. They scream in that high pitched scream as only Junior High girls can. Great fun!

Darren thinks this looks like a lot of fun too, so he places his hand on the table and then places the nail gun on top of his hand. He missed the part about unplugging the nail gun. He pulls the trigger on his nail gun. THWACKKKK! The nail goes through his hand into the table beneath. Now, Darren is screaming in a higher pitch than any of the teen girls. The substitute teacher comes running back into the room, takes one look at Darren’s hand and promptly goes running back out of the room looking sick.

Paramedics are called, the shop teacher pries the nail out, and Darren heads off to the hospital while Mike heads off for a discussion with Vice Principal Niday (not his first such discussion and not his last either). Darren has such a discussion waiting for him when he returns to school.

Darren proudly showed that scar for the rest of the time that I knew him. He was proud of it. He and Mike continued to be punks and bullies and, as far as I know, they probably still are today. I did find a picture of Mike on Facebook. He’s fat, wearing camoflauge, carring a gun and drinking a beer. He still looks like the kind of guy who'd probably beat you up as soon as look at you.

Darren never learned anything from that scar. Scars are supposed to be a reminder of a lesson learned. I find myself incredibly saddened by people who carry their scars around, but never learn anything from them, or worse, learn the wrong lessons from them.

I see this happen regularly. Friends, relatives, acquaintances, people at work (especially my old secular jobs) earn scars that they don’t learn from. These scars are usually emotional and mental, but occasionally physical. Divorce. Family feuds. Arguments with friends. Bad relationship choices. Poor financial decisions. Again and again, they are hurt, and again and again they miss the lesson.

Single moms bring boyfriend after boyfriend into their family lives hurting themselves and damaging their children. I feel worst for their children who never get to see healthy relationships. They will continue that cycle.

Families spend and spend and spend in fits of materialism that leaves them deeper and deeper in debt and working long hours to pay the bills. This often drives a wedge in the marriage and leaves the family broken and bruised. And yet, they keep spending what they don’t have.

Young women give themselves to guy after guy in an effort to find love and companionship. There is a breed of guy who preys on such women. These users and abusers leave emotional and physical scars on these women and the women continue to let them do it.

There are men who ignore their wives and take them for granted. Then, when the woman finally leaves him, he refers to her as the ‘The Old Bitch’ or some similar denigrating reference. He then makes it very clear to anyone and everyone that he meets that marriage is a mistake, never learning that what you put into something directly affects what you get out of it.

These are just a few examples of unlearned scars, scars that are earned, but never learned from.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Darren probably learned never to shoot himself with a nail gun, but I’m pretty sure that he didn’t learn not to blindly follow Mike. Darren and Mike needed wise counsel in their lives, someone who has been there and learned the right lesson from their scars. We all need that.

It is important to seek out someone wiser and older. This just can’t be anyone. Many people get old and full of scars that they never profited from. Look for someone who has lived well and is still doing so. Seek someone with strong values. Build a relationship and ask them to speak into your life. Learn from their scars and ask them to help you learn the right lessons from yours.

Socrates was credited with saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Examine your life. Earn your scars so that you can proudly wear them, so you can point to your scars and say, “This is the lesson I learned from this.” Then someday, you will be able to pass on the same lessons to others.

And, for the record…Don’t shoot a nail gun at your hand.

* names have been changed to protect the stupid