It seemed such an odd love to develop, given my age and work experience. Trauma and I have been in many battles together. Between the injuries I've seen and the few I've heard or felt, it seems unlikely to want to fly in any way, shape or form. I was petrified the first time we took off on a machine to achieve that feeling - it was both petrifying and intoxicating. I learned the first day that you don't fly off a motorcycle willy nilly, and a good driver can guide you through the ride with ease and grace.
My wife got me a bike a few weeks ago. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a thing quite so much. Probably not since I was a kid, at Christmastime. I couldn't ride today, even though the afternoon was beautiful. It was Homecoming, and we had 3 kids going, so it was time to be a mom. Evening came, the long shadows of an autumn sunset, and I headed down to the garage to look at her, ending up hauling her out for a bath.
She's been through a battle, I thought as I washed the saddlebags. I found gouges in the crash bar on the back side and a little chip out of the paint. Her scars don't make me love her any less. I'm scrubbing this bike, and thinking of some old Scriptures I used to love...how God used Rahab the "harlot", Mary Magdalene, Deborah the Judge who stabbed someone through the eye with a tent stake. Scarred and battered women who couldn't be quelled by the evils they'd seen, the sins they'd committed or the men who tried to crush them. How those stories used to give me hope, used up, battered and scarred before I was old enough to make those choices for myself.
Loving something (or someone) scarred is to participate in redemption. Reclamation. It's an honor to be the one to put footprints in the dusty earth that bears the disfigurements of the war that passed through. To tend, to water, and finally, to harvest from that land. You'll never forget that the ditch there used to be a deep furrow - now covered in lush grass, your feet will still remember the gash exposed. Time - and love - heals all wounds.
My own scars have faded, from red to pink to flesh. Lines still cut across but I don't catch strangers staring at them anymore. My bike is a lot like me, scars hidden now, there only for the intimate touch, not the casual glance. I'm going to enjoy riding my bike even more, knowing those scars are there, that she carried some other rider out of a battle. May she be a part of my own Phoenix story, part of the healing.
Part of the reclamation of this battered old self.
My wife got me a bike a few weeks ago. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a thing quite so much. Probably not since I was a kid, at Christmastime. I couldn't ride today, even though the afternoon was beautiful. It was Homecoming, and we had 3 kids going, so it was time to be a mom. Evening came, the long shadows of an autumn sunset, and I headed down to the garage to look at her, ending up hauling her out for a bath.
She's been through a battle, I thought as I washed the saddlebags. I found gouges in the crash bar on the back side and a little chip out of the paint. Her scars don't make me love her any less. I'm scrubbing this bike, and thinking of some old Scriptures I used to love...how God used Rahab the "harlot", Mary Magdalene, Deborah the Judge who stabbed someone through the eye with a tent stake. Scarred and battered women who couldn't be quelled by the evils they'd seen, the sins they'd committed or the men who tried to crush them. How those stories used to give me hope, used up, battered and scarred before I was old enough to make those choices for myself.
Loving something (or someone) scarred is to participate in redemption. Reclamation. It's an honor to be the one to put footprints in the dusty earth that bears the disfigurements of the war that passed through. To tend, to water, and finally, to harvest from that land. You'll never forget that the ditch there used to be a deep furrow - now covered in lush grass, your feet will still remember the gash exposed. Time - and love - heals all wounds.
My own scars have faded, from red to pink to flesh. Lines still cut across but I don't catch strangers staring at them anymore. My bike is a lot like me, scars hidden now, there only for the intimate touch, not the casual glance. I'm going to enjoy riding my bike even more, knowing those scars are there, that she carried some other rider out of a battle. May she be a part of my own Phoenix story, part of the healing.
Part of the reclamation of this battered old self.
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