When The Love Of God Scars You

There she was.  Walking through the grocery store.  Head covered.  As if in mourning.  Husband within foot steps.  Head turning.  Dark skin.  Beat red globe-like mark.  Covering, nearly half her face.

And from the eyes she looks out from…I think.  What would it be like to be her?  Not escaping the burn-like fire, flamed across her face.  The story of her life lay exposed for all to see.

And I start questioning…

Was this a case of a wife escaping?  One’s I have read about in Voice of the Martyrs?  Or a case of a woman, turning Christian?  And her village making her face, a burning inferno….just to teach her?

And there is just something about scars.  The more you try not to look at them…the more they draw you.  

Still, as I think about this stranger, I look for some resemblance.   For even heathens can see differences.  But, how much harder to look for likeness in somehow who seems to be world’s apart.  Culturally distant.  Completely different from what you view as common?


Hours pass. The Holy day of our Lord’s crucifix draws near. Crosses seem to stare at me from upon the window sill.

• One from my husband, when we were suffering distance.  He found it on the beach & gave it to me as an emblem of hope needed, at the time.
• Another, from my sweet foster daughter.  The one who left.  Who time and distance will never untangle this love that I feel for her.  Regardless of how hard that year was that we had her.  She found it.  Pressed it along with her face, against our glass window.  Smiling.  Me hearing a muffled, “Here. I know you like crosses.”
• The other, from my little girl.  Finding it in the wide open…where all good things are from.  Creating it, weaving it, with hands still innocent.  A heart simply wanting to please her mama.  Oh, those grasses woven.  Stronger now as two.  

And yet, I feel pierced.  Scared by a love for the kids I still see in China.  Pierced by the ones that break my heart and wake me up at night.  The one’s, a world away, my heart still somehow seems to be united with.

Yes, they are tattooed inside me…somewhere deep, impossible to erase…inside my mind.  And any conscious one, would never choose to be scared with the images of the lost….the thoughts of a broken world.  

Yet, we don’t choose what we are scared with…He does.

And I mourn.  Like a mother who has lost a nation.  A mom that’s been stripped from her children.  Children who she never asked to be parted with. Now relating somehow with Mary.

And scars are never easy.

• We can cover them with make-up.  
• We can fail to look in the mirror, pretending not to see them.  
• We can go out into the world and put on a happy face as if we are unflawed by the things we have been through….

But, true scars.  The scars of love. The ones from a different fire than the one that afflicted the lady in the grocery store…..should never be covered up.

Yes, scars are the imprint of love.  They are the mark, that says….we have fought well.   They are a badge of a life well lived.

Then, my thoughts float to another scared one.  The only one worth looking at.  His body.  Bruised.  His side.  Undone.  The blood of salvation.  Freely flowing down, to save the world.

Yet, even in His spiritual state.  Even in His resurrected.  Redeemed.  Risen by God state….His physical scars still remained.  

And, like Thomas, doubting the goodness of the resurrection, found in the suffering…

I touch Him…and begin to believe again.

I touch the pierced one.  God’s Only Son.  Who can identify with my…all my sufferings.  

And suddenly. I am not so alone.

And although our entrance to heaven is not through our scars, but Christs.  I ask myself, “What will be the account I give at the end of my life?”

Life wasn’t easy, but here are the scars.  The one’s that identify us with God and the glory of His Resurrection.

And I take the coverings from my head.  Stand tall.  Face the mirror.  Remove all foundations, trying to make me look perfect.

Look at the cross in the window of my deliverance.

Rejoicing at His sacrificial love.  This love that scares me.  Scares me so….

This image.  This reflection. This perfectly flawed being….might not bare the name of flesh and blood…

But that of The One who gave His life for us….

Jesus.