Today I’m sharing the story of how I got my scar. I shared it a couple years ago on my blog HERE, and it was the most popular blog post I’ve ever written. Tune in next week where I’ll talk about why I think it was the most popular post, why scar stories are so relatable & why we don’t share scar stories as adults. I’ll dive deep into the topics of vulnerability, shame, and weakness. You won’t want to miss it!
And now on to the story.
How I Got My Scar
If you’ve seen any photo of me, you probably noticed that I have a scar on my chin! I actually get asked about it pretty frequently. It’s kind of funny, because most of the time I forget that I have it, until someone asks me, “what happened to your chin?” They always expect me to say that I hurt it a week ago and are always taken aback when I say “I fell off my bike when I was 12.”
It’s true! My scar came from a bike accident that I had while hanging out with some friends on a Sunday afternoon the week before my 13th birthday. Thankfully, it’s not something that I’ve really been self conscious about! I think about it sometimes and wonder if people really notice it, or if they wonder how I got it, or if they ever describe me as, “you know, she has a scar on her chin.” But the times I think about that are so infrequent! Most of my friends that I’ve made since I was 13 don’t ask me about it, and if they do, it’s after they’ve known me for a long time. The people who ask about it are usually strangers! Funny, right?
I thought that since some of you may be wondering about it too, I’d tell you the whole story!
It was a normal Sunday afternoon. I liked to invite friends over after church to hang out for the afternoon. It was easy because we would see their parents again for our church service in the evening. This particular Sunday I had my friends Celeste and Cecelia over, and we decided to go for a bike ride. We only had two bikes and one scooter. One of our bikes didn’t have working breaks. They rusted because my brother decided to ride his bike into the pool one day. Smart. So I decided to take that one, because if anyone was going to get hurt I didn’t want it to be one of my friends!
We rode through the neighborhood for a little bit and eventually decided to come back home. I thought it would be fun to try to find a new way back to my house. I saw a street that looked familiar, so we went up it. It was a pretty steep hill. When we got to the top we realized it was a dead end, so we had to come back down. It was a street that came to a T at the bottom of the hill. So you had to turn either right or left at the bottom.
Well, you guessed what happened. As soon as I started going down on my bike I thought to myself, “this is a bad idea.” but it was too late. I started gaining speed, and since I didn’t have working breaks, I didn’t know what to do! As I approached the turn, I realized that I didn’t turn far enough, so I over-corrected to avoid running into the curb and fell sideways.
I landed chin first and slid across the pavement for a little bit. I got scrapes all over!! Weirdly, the first thing that crossed my mind was Romans 8:28 “All things work together for good to those that love God and are called according to His purpose.” I wondered what good would come out of this accident, but I knew there would be something!
My friends rushed over and Cecelia asked me, “what hurts??” and I replied, “everything!!” She expected me to say, “my chin,” because she told me later that she could see my bone. Yuck. As she darted back to our house (which was a pretty long way away… I still think of that moment and think what an awesome friend Cecelia was to run all that way), the owner of the house I crashed in front of came out. She was very friendly and gave me some water and offered to drive me back to my house.
I got home, and the first thing my mom noticed was that I had a pretty bad gash on my leg. She hadn’t seen my chin yet. I think someone said to her, “you should look at her chin…” she did and said, “Oh. I think we should go to the emergency room.”
I ended up getting 14 stitches in my chin, 1 stitch in my leg, and I also found out I broke my right pinky finger. What did I want to do after that? Show off my battle scars to my crush at church. Go figure. I missed church, but a group of people had gone out to eat after church. I felt pretty legit as I walked in with bandages all over both of my arms, my chin, and my finger in a splint. It wasn’t until the next day that everything really started to hurt haha.
About 6 years later, when I was a freshman in college, my mom offered to pay for me to have cosmetic surgery to make my scar less noticeable. We had always thought that the doctor in the ER didn’t stitch it up as well as he could have. I went and had the procedure, this time they did 18 stitches!
Well, even after the cosmetic surgery I still have my scar, and I really don’t mind it at all.
Listen to more podcast episodes HERE.
