The doctor looked at me with concern in her eyes.

My heart skipped. “What’s wrong? Is the infection not clearing up? Is it not healing?”

“Well, there’s still signs of an infection,” she admitted. “But what I’m really worried about is that you won’t heal quickly.” She cringed.

“Which means…” I coaxed.

“Which means you could have a scar.”

I exhaled and smiled a little. “I don’t care if I have a scar. I just want it to heal!”

It is healing. And I will indeed have a scar. The doc confirmed it during my recent follow-up visit.

Another of my few visible physical scars. And one more among dozens that the experiences of life have left on my mind, heart, and soul.

I’ve recently finished polishing the manuscript for my first novel – a piece with the working title of The Voice of Melody. The story incorporates several themes; a major one is the question of suffering and dealing with life circumstances that could either render us crippled, powerless – or refine us for some greater purpose and later empower us with a greater strength. At one point, a father counsels his daughter on that topic, and the wisdom he passes on to her sustains her through several subsequent trials.

In essence, he says that scars are left behind for us to remember what we’ve gone though so we can live as grateful people: grateful for death or greater pain we have been spared, and grateful for any mercy we have been shown.

If we never went through the difficult things, we wouldn’t know the meaning of gratitude because we wouldn’t recognize our need to be grateful. To paraphrase my colleague, Tony, it is those scars (hard times) that can make us thankful for all the goodness in life.

I will have a scar on my head. And every time I feel it, I can remember how God helped the doctor to catch the cyst before it became too threatening, how He helped her to remove all the tissue to spare me from greater trouble.

And I can be thankful that I am alive today, alive to give and to bless.

In a week when many Americans will pause to count their blessings, let us count all of them. The obvious. The commonplace. The miraculous. And the scar-laced.