God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.
Elbert Hubbard
We all have them. Physical scars. Emotional scars. Spiritual scars. They represent having survived a harm that has been done, a damage inflicted, but they also represent a healing has occurred, don’t they? To have a scar is not so much about what you survived, as it is about how you have healed from an affliction, have regained your physical, emotional, or spiritual health and are moving on.
When a scar is emotional or spiritual, it cannot legitimately be called a scar if it has not healed. If you have a physical wound and it doesn’t heal, you would never call it a scar. You would also keep working to clean it of all infection, medicate it, treat it with care, and give it time so that it can heal. Yet, so often we neglect to give this same care, attention, and patience to wounds that exist in the heart and mind.
Scars are not about your ability to withstand pain and hardship, but your ability to heal despite the affliction. To forgive yourself and others, to continue on again, to have faith again, to love again. That’s where the true accomplishment lies.
The Hubbard quote about God looking for scars isn’t about being courageous and taking on risks or even living life to the fullest. It’s about knowing how to heal…which I think, really is learning to live life to the fullest.
B 🤍