Christ is perfect, but He has scars.

Christ is perfect, but He has scars. 

How could this be true?  We often see scars as imperfections.  We often see them as reminders of things we wish had gone differently.  Sometimes as things we would rather forget.

But Christ is perfect, and He has scars.

Not only does He have scars, but those scars tell an excruciating and beautiful story.  He makes no attempt to hide those scars.  In fact, He shares them and invites us to see and feel them. 
Christ didn't just suffer for us.

He set the example.

Not only in how He loved and served others,

Also in how He suffered.  In how He created a powerful and healing narrative.

Christ doesn't hide his scars.

He doesn't pretend it never happened.

He doesn't act like it didn't hurt or it was no big deal.

He owns that He didn't want to go through that. He shares that it was agonizing.  He claims no power in glossing over the Truth.

AND

God, through Christ, has turned the worst pain into the greatest healing story. 

Not by making it as though it never happened.  Not by saying that it was OK for those who hurt Christ to have hurt Him.  Not by saying it wasn't even that hard.

It is healing because the Truth is acknowledged and felt. 

It is healing because it creates shared experience.

But part of the beauty of the scars is that they have become scars. They are no longer open wounds. 

Christ doesn't need to bleed and die again to validate His and our experience.

How often do we feel like we need to open our wounds again to validate our past hurt?

If we don't keep opening the wound, we somehow lessen the validity of our past experience?

How do we follow the example of Christ?

How do we honor the experience through the scars and not by keeping the wound open and bleeding?

How do we let Him transform our excruciating pains into beauty? 

Not the beauty of a life where bad things never happened.

But the beauty of a life where bad things happened AND it was awful. AND I now have some of the ability of Christ to sit with others in their pain.  AND those experiences are painful AND beautiful AND sacred. 

I can stop wishing it never happened.  Letting that wish go doesn't let an abuser off the hook. 

It just frees me to use that capacity and depth in my soul elsewhere.