So I took a couple of days off, not that I took time off from reading, just from writing. I want to make sure that what I write stays true to my faith, my heart, and my beliefs. I also want to be sure that what I write is based upon time spent reflecting on what God shows me.
This time I want to write about scars. I have a recent scar on my arm from slipping down some stairs and catching my arm on a small nail sticking out of the wall. I almost didn’t notice it, my wife did and the shower also reminded me that it was there. It burned, but now that it’s simply a scar, I don’t even remember that it’s there. Here is what was in one of the devotionals that I read:
“A wound hurts, a scar tells a story. A wound can get infected, a scar is healed. A wound you hide, a scar you show.”
It made me think about those things that made me hurt in my past. People have a tendency to think about people who hurt them, bad break ups, abusive relationships. I tend to reflect on an event. When my dad passed away. It’s been almost 15 years now, actually next month it will be 15 years. I think about that night, the phone call I received from my moms neighbor calling me to tell me that my dad went to the hospital in an ambulance. By the way, he would have NEVER paid for an ambulance. He would have rather walked. I remember the look on my mom’s face when she asked me to sit down so she could tell me the bad news. I remember refusing to sit because I didn’t want to hear what she was about to tell me. I even remember the imprint of my fist in the wall when I punched it after hearing her say that he had a major heart attack and was gone. I didn’t know how to process this. I stayed awake for the next 40 hours trying to get my head to understand it all. It wasn’t until the day of the actual funeral (which was after two “showings” of hugging and shaking about 600 people’s hands in the previous days) that I finally broke down and cried. I ended up having a nose bleed on someone’s shirt. I even remember the moment of getting my dad’s flag that was over the coffin.
I say all that to led into what God did with that wound. He used it to lead me to North Carolina where I was able to get out of drinking and other things I was in. That led to working in a youth venue and meeting Christian bands of all variety. That led to moving to Tennessee where I played in one of those bands and toured the US. When that ended it led me back to NC and eventually into another venue that I had played at while I was in the band. Getting laid off there led to me moving to VA near my family, which then led to Galax where I found a web design job. In that time, I helped start a venue in the area with someone who had also visited the NC venue and wanted something in this area. The job in Galax then led me to where I am today out on my own, a year and a half into my own business. That has given opportunity for more ministry including working with an after-school program to help kids that need it the most. It has been an amazing ride so far that sparked from a wound. God has used that scar to help me not only go full on in following Him, but I’ve even been able to be sympathetic with different people that have had the same type of loss in their life.
My encouragement to you is to take the wounds and give them time to heal into scars, then after God has healed them (side note.. you have to LET Him heal them) and then allow Him to use the scars to tell your story and help someone else out.
Our greatest example of wounds used for healing was Christ:
“He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.”
2 Corinthians 5:15 (NLT Version)
