We all carry scars. Like old lions lying in the sun. Like old warriors trying to get it together one last time.
No one emerges from this life unscathed.
At age 80-plus I lie in bed in the early morning hours all finished with sleep but knowing it’s still too early to rise, just thinking about things. My mind travels back to errors I have made along the way, mistakes of all kinds, big and little, consequential and not. I try not to beat myself up over them, but frequently I offer up a prayer for the one I may have hurt or disappointed or neglected.
I’ve told here how my father in the last few years of his lengthy life (over 95 orbits around the sun!) dredged up something from his 18th year that still bothered him. His mother had ordered him to leave home and live on his own.. (Grandma had a houseful of children, they were a coal-mining family, the boys were constantly fighting, while Carl–my dad–had been earning his own living for years and she needed some peace. I suspect I’d have done what she did.) Nothing we said eased Dad’s mind. It bothered him that his mother did something so unfair. Eventually time became his friend and as he eased into the sunset of life (I’m smiling at such an apt but dumb depiction of death!), this ceased to bother him.
When I lie there thinking of the past, my mind does not fixate on failures of others or my mistreatment by them. I’ve been the recipient of blessings and grace galore. No complaints here. (When my Bertha–we will celebrate four years of marriage on January 11–brings my favorite dinner in, I sometimes say, “I must be one of the most deserving people in the world. Either that, or I am daily showered with grace!” I know the answer to that one.)