Scars

I think it’s safe to say that almost everyone has scars. As the singer Toby Mac says, “Scars come with living”. Statistically, 77% of people already have a scar by the time they are a teenager, and over 100 million people acquire new scars every year. There is nothing uncommon about a simple scar. However, scars tend to tell a story.

Some scars reveal dumb decisions that have been made. A scar on my knee reminds me never to race a bike wearing flip-flops. Some reveal miraculous stories of survival. The long scar on my friend’s shoulder is a memento of his hospital stay after a devastating motorcycle crash. Others are self-inflicted, reminiscent of a dark time in our life.

However, the scars that carry the most tragic and impactful stories are often the scars that no one can see; the emotional, psychological, and mental hurts that we carry with us our entire lives. Deeply embedded in our hearts and minds, these unseen wounds are the remnants of our past hurts and hangups. They tell stories of abuse, abandonment, loss, addiction, fear, and depression. These emotional scars can become crippling if we let them, clouding our perception of the world and cheapening our self worth.

Although emotional scars are invisible, sometimes they become so ingrained in our lives that we attach them to our identity. We lie to ourselves about who we are, saying, “Because I was abused as a child, I am not worthy to be a parent.” And “I have always dealt with anxiety, therefore, I am just a fearful person. It’s who I am.” When we compare our scars with the perceived perfection of others’ lives, we create reasons God can’t use us. We say, “Perhaps if I hadn’t done (insert horrible thing that happened in the past), God could use me, but as it is, I am too broken.” And the more we attach our negative experiences and scars with our identity, the faster our sense of self-worth dwindles.

In short, many of us are ashamed of our scars. In the same way that a teenage girl puts concealer on her face to create an image of beauty, we often try to hide our scars by pretending that we have it all together, while secretly wishing our darkness would just fade away.

A recent movie that came out, called Wonder Park, dealt with a young girl’s anxiety and depression, and her recovery process. Towards the end of the movie the girl looks at the receding darkness in her mind, and, noticing that there is still a small, dark “scar”, makes this profound statement:

“Maybe [the darkness] will never really fully go away. Maybe it’s there to remind us to look at the light that surrounds us.”

-Wonder Park

What if, instead of seeing our emotional scars as symbols of past suffering, we saw them as opportunities to share our stories of survival? What if our darkest scars are the backdrop against which God’s glory shines the brightest?

When we share the stories of our scars with others, God can use our vulnerability to heal us, and to encourage others.

About a month ago, during a mission trip, members of our group began to share their brokenness and their scars with each other, as well as how God was working in their situations, and it was one of the most powerful moments I have ever experienced. Do you know what the coolest part of that moment was? When those people shared their scars, they realized that a scars are nothing to be ashamed of, and their identities cannot be built on their hurts and hangups.

As Plumb’s song Beautifully Broken says,

You’re beautifully broken
And you can be whole again
Even a million scars
Doesn’t change whose you are
You’re worthy
Beautifully broken

-Plumb, Beautifully Broken

As we move forward, let us embrace living as God’s witness, scars and all! Let us be honest about who we are, defining our character, not by our scars, but by the grace of God working through those broken places in our lives.