There is a bill­board in my city that in it’s adver­tise­ment for beer says in bold let­ters:

No scars, no stories

I think this makes a great phi­los­o­phy on life. Take my boots for exam­ple. If I step softly and avoid the pud­dles and mud and only wear them on safe, shiny floors, my boots would look nicer. Instead, they are scuffed up and weather-​​worn. The marks they carry hold tales of where they’ve been, what places I’ve stomped through.

My body has marks, too, scars from acci­dents, one from a surgery, my tat­toos are a kind of scar as well, inked-​​art that I’ve will­ingly defaced my skin with. Each scar on my body has it’s story, too. And then there are the invis­i­ble scars, the ones you can’t see that are mapped out on my soul. Some of them, prob­a­bly most of them, are self-​​inflicted. I am usu­ally my own worst enemy, unkind thoughts go unchecked and embed them­selves into my emo­tions, and then I bleed as the barbs of self-​​loathing tear across the unseen flesh of who I am. These scars carry the sto­ries I don’t like to tell. They are like the secret diaries young girls keep hid­den in the top of their closet. They are my pri­vate scars from my pri­vate stories.

Then there are the scars that oth­ers have given me, either inten­tion­ally and with mal­ice or acci­den­tally and in igno­rance. Some of these scars are huge, snake­like, wrapped around my soul. Oth­ers are so small. They are but a trace of mem­ory of a pain that hap­pened so long ago so as to be for­got­ten. Yet each scar has it’s own story. Some I remem­ber well, in vivid liv­ing color. Oth­ers, I can­not even remem­ber who inflicted in upon me.

And there are the other kind of scars, the kind that I have done, the dam­age from my life upon another human being. It is this kind of guilt that can drive a woman to drink. I thnk this is why for­give­ness is so vital to spir­i­tual and emo­tional as well as men­tal health. It is one thing to for­give oth­ers who have wounded us; it is entirely another to for­give our­selves for hav­ing done the wounding.

I won­der about the scars of Jesus. His body was scarred for all of eter­nity. If you believe you will see him in the after­life look for his scars. They’ll be there. And I believe I will be there, though scar­less, for­given and redeemed, able to live in the light of His Good Love because of those scars. The scars of Jesus are like tat­toos. They are scars of love.

No scars, no sto­ries. The scarred God keeps on his body for always the story of me. I am his scar.