My mom and dad were childhood friends, and like many farm kids in rural Ohio during the 1920’s and 30’s, they married close to home. They attended the same one-room school house as grade schoolers, and later graduated from Pleasantville High School together. They worshipped at the same church. Their parents attended Grange Hall meetings together and shared gossip around the pot bellied stove at the Pleasantville Hardware.
Shoot, my parents are related to one another not many generations back… after all, my great-grandparents’ only means of transportation was horse drawn. You just didn’t get too far from home.
I prefer to think of my mother and father as young people. I have photographs that confirm their youth, their energy. A wholesome young couple; their arms around one another, smiling shyly, enjoying a day at the lake—Dad, tall and thin; Mom, short and shapely—leaning into one another, mere teenagers. It’s remarkable really, to see them like that, the unknown, now known—waiting to unfold before them. They had no idea how their future would play out… first the war, Dad becoming a Marine, Mom a riveter at Wright Patterson, building the machinery that everyone prayed would carry their loved ones home again safely. After the war, they stuffed four boys into a tiny house on George Street before moving to the country.
Mom was very athletic. She was the starting forward for Pleasantville High School Girls Basketball team in 1937, ‘38 and ‘39. “The shortest one on the floor, but completely in charge,” Dad boasted, his chest out. When they were in the fourth grade, during a makeshift softball game, Mom was catching and Dad was at bat. As Dad swung for the fence, Mom leaned in too far as Dad’s bat clipped her nose and laid it over to one side. As Mom told the story, her school teacher simply reset it and told her to sit in the back with ice on her nose for the remainder of the school day.
Flash forward ninety years and I watched her spend her final days resting uncommunicatively in a nursing home. I could still make out the scar and the slight crook on the bridge of her nose. Dad, who has been gone now for thirty years, referred to it as his love mark.
The last years weren’t kind to Mom. She didn’t look the same; tired, hardly recognizable—except for her distinctive nose. I can see it in that picture of her and Dad in 1938. I can see it then, and I can see it today. I see it, and I’m grateful for her scar, that slight crook in her nose that reminds me of a teenaged Carrie Mae who selflessly spent much of her youth and energy on me.
I hope, like me, you are able to reflect lovingly on your mother. I think that when I get to Heaven, Mom will look like she did in 1938, and I’ll recognize her by her scar. It’s fascinating to realize that as Jesus was resurrected from the grave, His scars remained to serve as reminders to each of us of the sacrifice He made on our behalf. Think of that: new bodies, new abilities, but the same old scars. I pray your scars will remind you of the enduring life Christ offers.
Just as we’ll recognize Jesus’ scars on that day, you can rest assured—He already knows you by your scars. The Bible says we’ll be known as we were known and we’ll all then fully realize that it’s by His wounds that we are healed.
“He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:11-12