The Ballestero Blog

Getting Bigger Than Your Scars

Every year in September, I go riding 4-wheelers for a week on the Kentucky and West Virginia border. Sometimes on a ridge we can actually see three states. We always come back and sleep in our house every night. At least one of my sons and several other preachers and their sons go with us. Fifteen to twenty guys is not uncommon.

There are some very respectful and kind men that live in that area who enjoy guiding our trips. They are not really guides in the sense that they charge anything. They just know “them thar hill and hollers.”  We do buy their gas and pay for their meals, so that makes them happy. We ride long hours. We ride in all weather.

On a hot day a few years ago, we stopped on a hilltop for a snack break. I was riding 2^nd in line behind the day guide, Rick. Somehow as we were eating our snack, Rick a middle aged Southern Baptist, and myself started talking about burns and injuries.

He volunteered, “You know, Bro. Ballestero, when I was 2 weeks old, my folks kept me in a bassinet. Evidently I had a breathing problem of some kind. We had an old steam type humidifier. My Dad was carrying a pan of boiling water to pour into that humidifier.  Somehow he tripped on a throw rug and that pan of boiling water spilt on my leg. Because of that, I received 3^rd degree burns on my right leg from my knee down.”

“Oh No!” I said as my face furrowed and grimaced in sympathetic pain. How Horrible!! After a few seconds pause, I asked a personal question. “Did you have to have any operation?”

“Many!” was his one word response.

I then was curious to know more, so I asked, “Do the scars still come up to your knee?”

“Oh no,” he said, “They only come up to my ankle bone now.”

“How can that be?” I wondered out loud.

“When you’re a new born baby, from your foot to your knee, is only this far,” he said, as he measured the approximate distance with this hands.

Rick then took off his right tennis shoe and then pulled off his sock too. Sure enough, there was a faint scar and discoloration from his toe on up one side of his foot to his anklebone. I looked with fascination.

“How come it only comes up to your anklebone now, when it used to come up to your knee?” I asked.

“Bro. Ballestero, he said kindly, (but I felt like the biggest goober in the world) Scars don’t grow. I got bigger than my scar!”

It was as if the Holy Ghost spoke a truth to my spirit. Scars don’t grow. It’s normal to get bigger than your scars. If we never get bigger than our scars, maybe it’s a sign we’re not growing.