Have you ever fallen over your own two feet and scraped your knees on the pavement?

It probably happens to me more to me than I’d like to admit, but I’m sure you’ve experienced it a few times in your life too.  Maybe more if you’re as much of a ditz as I am.

Every time it happens though, my least favorite part isn’t the fall itself.  What’s worse is the dread that comes with knowing, “Oh crap…that’s going to hurt SO much more later.”  ‘Cause, for me at least, treating the wound is usually more painful and scary than getting it.

Sometimes, I’ll try to ignore it for as long as I possibly can.  “You know what Jenine, this isn’t too bad.  If I think about it really hard, it just feels…really numb.”  Yeah.  That’s usually how I know it’s starting to get bad.  

But I have the biggest fear of that stinging sensation that comes when you start cleaning up that area with hydrogen peroxide and water.  It’s the worst.  It feels like fire and death.  And I absolutely despise it.

Oh, but it’s not over yet.  Nope.  Once you’ve bandaged that little sucker, it still hurts to walk around with, and it takes a while before it starts to look like regular skin again.  Then it starts to do that stupid thing where it begins to scab, but the scab doesn’t look like how your skin used to look or it feels funny, so you pick at it and pick at it until you accidentally make it bleed again.  TADA!  It’s back to being a wound.

…am I getting too graphic yet?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, our emotional wounds are so much more like our physical wounds than we realize.

They usually hurt like hell when get them.  But they’re a reminder about what we need to look out for, and how easy it is for us to get distracted.

Sometimes, we want to delay the healing process.  It hurts to talk or even think about the things that have made us feel so much pain and vulnerability.  But wounds only fester and come back to bite us even harder when we internalize that pain.

And when we finally start healing, it’s not always an easy process.   When we keep going back to the place that we were hurt and we peel off the layers that God has been building us to heal those pains- we start to bleed again.  And, we have to start that healing process all over again.

Making the transition from a wound to a scar is pretty difficult when you keep picking at the scabs.

But when that wound finally becomes a scar, it really is the most relieving sensation in the world.  You can finally run your fingers over that part of your body without flinching from the pain.  And sometimes, you can laugh about how you got it in the first place.  ‘Cause, look where you are now.  Happy.  Healed.  And ready to start walking by yourself again.

Just like the scars Christ bore after being hung on the cross to save us from our sins, our own scars have their significance too.  They remind us of who we are, what we’ve overcome, and all that we are capable of overcoming.

We just have to be willing to fight the pain, and start to heal.

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Thanks for reading!  And as always, click below to read more word vomits and mind farts from some pretty great people.

Taylor // Brian // Xing // Judy // Justin // Hnou // Esther // Josh