Beautiful Scars

Yesterday was really great.

I met several of my cousins’ friends. I went to their youth group, and their worship band played several songs that I hadn’t heard in years.

It was a little warm outside and since I knew we’d be walking a lot and we’d be standing in super crowded buses and trams throughout the day, I acted upon my aunt’s suggestion and wore shorts.

I really dislike wearing shorts. I really, really dislike wearing shorts… I get tired of looking at my legs.

I know that sounds weird, but I have scars on my legs. And I just get sick of looking down and seeing them.

I know most everyone has a scar or two. It’s not an uncommon thing; but… they aren’t pretty. They never will be! They tell of stories, situations, and things I’ve experienced in my life. They will never go away. They’ll always be right there, in the same places, waiting for me to glance down. They’ll always be there. Always.

See, I’ve come to know several things about scars:

You aren’t born with them.

They always have a story.

The story is always unique.

The story is always one of pain.

And somehow the scar makes the person even more unique than they were before.

My scars define the real difference between my legs and anyone else’s. No one’s knees or ankles will look quite like mine, because they haven’t gone through the experiences that I have. My scars help to define… me.

I think that’s the way it works in life too.

It’s a concept I’ve been thinking about for a while, and after spending an entire day trying to ignore the scars on my own body, I decided I’d finalize the thoughts and lay them to rest in my own mind.

Life hurts.

We were born innocent, soft, and completely ignorant of pain, heartache, and the evils we’ll encounter in this world. Then we started to live, we started to grow, and in growing we started to experience life. We came to find that it hurts. Before we knew it we were being tossed around and somehow in someway life jabbed at our hearts, made us bleed, and left behind a trail of scars.

Everyone has scars.

Each of those scars has a story.

Each of those stories is unique.

Each of them is a story of pain.

And each scar has helped to mold the person into who they are today.

Another weird thing about bodily scars is the tissue they’re made up of. Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Yeah, scars are ugly to look at, but they’re made up of strong stuff! I think that’s the way scars in our lives work too. Their stories are typically deep, painful and personal. They are usually ugly marks left over from harsh times in our lives. But because of them, we’re stronger… We’re so much stronger…

When we were little, before we ever hurt ourselves too badly, the littlest scrape would cause us to dissolve into tears. A little blood, and that was it! We needed help right then. Mommy had to drop everything and kiss our boo-boos, bandage our scrapes, assure us that we weren’t dying, and listen to us whine about how much it hurt. But then as we got older, we learned what it meant to really feel pain. We began handling the tiny scrapes with ease; sometimes not even noticing they’d made an appearance until the pain was gone and they’d scabbed over nicely! The things that deserved attention continued getting it, and the things that did not need to be fussed over were left alone. We grew stronger, and through our newfound strength and understanding, began to react to pain in a healthy way.

(Yeah, I’m going to use that paragraph to make some sort of analogy for the pain in our lives. You should be getting used to this by now, so you really shouldn’t be surprised…You know, incase if you were planning on being surprised, I just figured I’d tell you that it’s an unnecessary reaction.)

Life makes scars, but it’s full of tiny scrapes too! Bad days, irritating people, temptations to sin, and so much more! We have the ability to blow them up into gigantic problems, just like when we were little, we’d blow our tiny scrapes up into big deals. But after life picks us up and throws us around a little bit, we begin to be able to choose our battles. We begin to be able to brush things off. We begin to act with maturity, mercy and grace. We acquire the ability to ignore the tiny scrapes of life, and focus on the bigger issues.

Eventually we are also able to turn to our side and see someone else hurting. We’re able to lend a helping hand to them as well, because we know how it feels to hurt. We know how it feels when those scars haven’t become scars yet, but they’re just a bloody mess of torn tissue. We know how it feels to have something rip us apart, and we know how it feels to know, even before it’s hardly started, that the process of healing will be long, and when we come through the other end, we will not look the same as we did before. We know. So, we can sympathize with those whose hearts are breaking.

And also, if we didn’t feel the pain, if we didn’t have the scars, we could never be the people God has made us to be. We weren’t born with scars, no, but we were born with problems. We were born with a sin nature. It takes time to chip away at that nature, and replace it with attitudes, thought processes and actions that glorify God. And when we’ve gone through that process, when we’ve chipped away at a bit of ourselves, and replaced it with something from Him, it does leave a scar. Sometimes just a tiny one, sometimes a big, fat, gnarly one, but it leaves a scar all the same. It hurts to have a bit of ourselves removed, but the scar that is left behind signifies something much more beautiful than what was there before! It signifies Christ’s holiness in our lives. It shows where He has taken our ugliness, our humanness, our sin, and removed it far, far from us. And it shows where He has allowed us the privilege of loving, honoring and serving Him.

Scars hurt. They’re ugly, and sometimes we wish we never had any. The process of getting a scar is a difficult one, and we never look the same afterward. But, they make us stronger. They are learning tools that God uses to make us who we are- who He wants us to be.

So please, don’t curse the scar, or the journey you had to take to acquire it; but instead, thank the God who loves you enough to shape you and mold you into the most beautiful creation that you could ever be.