Battle Scars

I have scars.

Some are noticeable, the reason I didn’t wear sleeveless shirts for a very long time. The reason I started drinking when I stopped making them for a time. Some are faint, very faint now, though they go deepest to me. Some are lined in neat rows. Some are meticulously random. Some are 15, 16 years old. There’s a big gap of time, marking freedom, and then some are shamefully recent.

They are permanent. They are a reminder. They are forever a part of me. I have wanted to cover them – to mark off the area – with a tattoo. I have wanted beyond words to have Him just take them away. Make them invisible. Heal the skin so I wouldn’t have to carry them with me. So I wouldn’t be reminded. Or tempted. Or both.

I have wanted to use them, somehow, for good. For healing, helping, proof that someone is not alone. But any mention of the practice in random conversation makes my breath catch in my throat. I can’t breathe. Can’t speak. My heart pounds in my ears and I am frozen to the spot. Never mind if it turns personal. So they have been left unredeemed.

Shame grips me like an icy hand. I play with the idea and become locked in the desire and then crippled with the shame.

Unspeakable.

Untouchable.

Inescapable.

I have been searching for ways out of this pit. I was disgusted to find myself here again, adding up behaviors and thoughts and practices to self-diagnose what has never “officially” been diagnosed. Depression. So technical and worldly but an explanation other than one that I am just a hopeless mess. Angry and ashamed and confused I wondered about the where and when and how and why. And I wonder how much of that I need to figure out before I can unravel the twisted mess my mind is.

But God… My faith. The Holy Spirit. Jesus. He’s here and he gives me grace and mercy and words and little bits of hope along this path.

“Chase it down,” I’ve been told. “Press in through the crowd, just to touch the hem of his cloak.”

But, unless you’ve been here, you don’t know how impossibly exhausting that sounds. Getting out of bed is exhausting. Picking up laundry off the floor, pulling weeds in the garden, even everything tiny is wearisome. Some days 3:00 – time to get the girls – comes and crushes me to the ground under the heel of promised failure and unworthiness. And getting that healing from God? That touch I know I need? Those answers and that sustaining hope and whatever other marvelous and beautiful things he has for me seems so far away. Past the ocean of my unworthiness, my practices of speaking horribly to myself, the automatic way I always turn away from his holy face because I don’t think he could even bear to look at me.

But that’s not the truth. What you see and feel is not true, it’s not the way I see you.

I know that. I know all these things.

But I don’t believe them, I haven’t been able to. Maybe I’m just a failure, or maybe there’s something in the way.

And still, my mighty and endlessly patient God is here, right at my side when I dare to turn to him. He offers words of wisdom, and peace, and peels back the layers without me knowing until he suddenly moves a mountain. And I see the evidence of his working in the rubble, how he has masterfully staged this undoing with a thousand little acts and whispers and prayers and words.

That Sunday night, obedient to pastor’s charge to come for prayer every time but still reluctant in my heart, still wanting to run, I stood at the front. And they prayed.

I know God moved, and it was a good prayer and something felt different but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Until, back in my seat, continuing to pray, I suddenly became aware something felt lighter. Unshackled.

My wrist. My arm. My scars.

They had no more weight.

I did not feel anything about them.

Blissful nothingness.

And then, we sang a song. The Holy Spirit song, that had one line that shot a holy truth right through me:

My shame is undone.

The shackles of shame, that kept me in fear, kept me silent, fed the fires of my unworthiness, were broken away. The beast of shame, with hot breath, will no longer stalk me. The shame was tied to those scars but also to the very thoughts and temptations, the desire to ask for help but finding the words caught up and unspeakable. Also to being stuck back in the pit with the reactions and feelings I hate but am surrounded and stalked by. It shackled all the darkness together, and kept me silent and hiding and believing I could never make it to the cloak of Jesus or walk out whatever came after.

But now it is undone.

By the grace and mercy and unfathomable wisdom of my heavenly Father.

The term “battle scars” has been tossed around but I’d always rejected it. To me they were inescapable and undeniable proofs of failure, of utter weakness, of desperation, of the evil in my heart winning. Of everything shameful.

But take that shame away and maybe they can be battle scars. If I pick up that sword and point it at my enemy, if now the beast of shame has had its teeth kicked in and breath knocked out and power gone, then maybe.

Maybe my God, a creating God, a God who turns water to wine, blindness to sight, life to death, can turn shame to battle scars.

I’m going to find out.