Why Your Scars Are BeautifulBy Belinda Elliott
CBN.com Daily Life Producer CBN.com – “Bad things happen to good people.” We hear it all the time. We know that it is true. Yet, when the “bad thing” happens to us, we somehow often seem to be caught off guard. The deep hurts that we experience in life can plague us for years to come. Author and speaker Sharon Jaynes knows this well. For years, she carried around wounds from her past without even realizing it. Jaynes grew up in a home filled with fighting and violence. Her father was an alcoholic, and his drunken rages left her crouching under her covers at night trying to shut out the sounds of her parents arguing. At age 12, Jaynes met a Christian woman in her neighborhood and began spending time with her. Although her family attended church every week, she had never seen a relationship with Jesus modeled in her home. Through her new friendship with her neighbor, she saw more than just religious rituals like her family performed on Sundays. She learned how to have a relationship with Jesus, and she accepted Christ two years later. Within five years both of her parents also came to know Christ. Her story seemed to have a fairy-tale ending. However, the years of fighting and violence at home left her very insecure. Among her deep-rooted insecurities was the belief that she was ugly and unloved. “Even though I became a Christian, I still had those wounds,” Jaynes explains. “And I carried them around with me well into my 30s.” Jaynes began to feel like something was missing from her life. As she attempted to discover what it was, she sensed God telling her to let go of her past hurts. That’s when she began the process of healing – a process that she calls “turning the wounds into scars.” “There is a big difference between a wound and a scar,” Jaynes says. “Because a scar says, ‘I’ve been healed, and this is my story.’” In her book, Your Scars Are Beautiful to God, Jaynes encourages readers to embrace their scars and allow God to use them in the lives of others. She says God prompted her to write the book after reading the familiar Scripture passage about the resurrection of Christ. “When Jesus appeared to His disciples, they did not recognize Him when He walked in the room until He showed them His scars. Once they saw His scars, then they knew who He was,” Jaynes says. “And as I was reading that I felt like God was saying to me, ‘that is still how people know Jesus today.’” Jesus could have healed His scars and come back without them. Instead, He chose to keep them. Jaynes believes that is because He had a message for us. Our scars are important, and He wants to use them. When Bad Things Happen We will probably never understand some of the things that happen to us in life. When approached with the question of why God allows pain in our lives, Jaynes says she usually refers to something she once heard Dr. James Dobson say. “He said that for us to try to understand God’s ways is like an amoeba trying to understand how the human body works. We just can’t do it,” Jaynes says. “And that is something that we have to come to grips with.” It is during our times of struggle that we find out what we really believe about God. A tragedy in our lives often leads us to a crisis of belief, Jaynes says. “I think that it’s very easy to believe in God when life is good,” she says. “But when life is not good, then that’s when we really decide if we believe it.” She tells the story of Wendy, a young woman who was raped. “She was very angry at God because she had been a good girl,” Jaynes explains, “and she thought that if you were good, then bad things would not happen.” Wendy was left with a choice to make. In the midst of her pain, Wendy had to decide between three options: God was not powerful enough to stop what happened; God was powerful enough, but simply didn’t care enough to stop what happened; or God allowed it to happen and He has some greater purpose behind it. After struggling for several years, Wendy decided God must have a purpose for what she endured, and she chose to release her pain to Him and trust Him with the outcome. It is a choice we all face when troubles hit our lives. Choose to Be Healed Each of us can be healed, Jaynes says, but first we must answer a question. She recalls the story in John 5 of Jesus healing a man who had lived as an invalid for 38 years. Before He healed him, Jesus asked the man, “Do you want to get well?” Perhaps the reason Jesus asked this, Jaynes says, is because the man’s life would drastically change once he was healed. He would have to learn to walk and get a job, among other things. Our lives, too, will change when we allow Jesus to heal our wounds. “I think we can be so comfortable with that wound that it almost becomes who we think we are,” Jaynes says. “‘I am a rape victim.’ ‘I am a woman who has been abused.’ ‘I had an abortion, and that’s who I am.’ We can become very comfortable in that and to let go of it and be healed is scary. You take on a whole new life.” Healing, Jaynes points out, also involves choices about forgiveness. If our wounds are from poor choices that we made, we must ask God to forgive us and accept that His death on the cross is enough to pay for our sins. Then we need to release the guilt and shame that we have felt. Healing often involves forgiving others as well. “I think that many people believe forgiveness means that we are saying that what they did is okay,” Jaynes explains. “It’s not okay. What it is saying is that I’m not going to let that control me any longer. I’m giving it to God.” Until a hurting person accepts God’s forgiveness, forgives themselves, and forgives the person who hurt them, Jaynes says, healing can never take place. Show Your Scars Once we are healed, the way we allow God to use our scars is by sharing them with others. Too often, Jaynes says, we hide our past hurts from people around us either because we are ashamed or because we fear rejection. Carrying these burdens around – something Jaynes compares to the dust cloud that follows Pigpen around in the Peanuts comic strip -- can limit the ways in which God is able to use us. “I lost a child a long time ago,” Jaynes says, “and when that happened I didn’t want to talk to anybody except someone who had gone through the same thing I had. I think that is how most people feel when they have gone through a struggle.” Perhaps the increase in the number of people seeking help from secular support groups supports this idea. “People are going anywhere and everywhere to find someone who has struggled with the same thing they have struggled with,” Jaynes says, “and it’s a little heartbreaking to think that they are having to go outside the church.” One reason people are afraid to show their scars is because they feel that their past will disqualify them for ministry. Jaynes believes that this doesn’t happen in churches as often as one may think. And if it does ever happen to anyone, she says, they should seriously reconsider their connection with that body of believers. “If we are at a place where we share that struggle and people do not rejoice with us and with God for restoring our lives, then we need to go somewhere else,” Jaynes says. Churches should seek to create safe places, such as Sunday school or small groups, where members can tell their stories. When that happens, Jaynes says, congregations will see a lot of healing take place. Beauty From Ashes Often, if we allow Him to, God will use our deepest hurt to develop our greatest ministry. The reason our scars can be beautiful, she says, is because God gives us opportunities to invest in other people because of the struggles we’ve gone through ourselves. For this reason, we should not despair when we experience painful circumstances. Rather, we should look for how God may want to use those circumstances. Jaynes says, “I’ve learned over the years to stop saying, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Instead, I say to God, ‘Okay, what now?’ This is a shattered dream, now what do I do with it? Where do I go from here?” If we allow God to replace our wounds with scars, and we are willing to use them to help others, He will redeem even our most painful experiences. As Jaynes writes in her book, Satan wants to use our past to paralyze us. God wants to use our past to propel us. The choice is ours.
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Panjee Tapales
27 August 2006 SOURCE: PHILIPPINE STAR What is it about truth that is so difficult to face? Every crisis, illness included, is a profound invitation to face the truth: about oneself, our choices, our sexuality, our relationships, every little detail about the life we’ve made. I was recently asked what I meant about living an authentic life: it’s peeling the layers of untruth—-as far as we can-—until we get to who we really are, stripped of all external and worldly trappings. It is a lifelong process; a process developed over lifetimes. I know people who lie and live exclusively in compartments. They will tell you that they do it out of love—-so as not to hurt others. What they don’t realize is that the pain inflicted by any form of lie and betrayal is far greater than any kind of pain that is borne out of truth. Truth, no matter how harsh, confers dignity upon its recipient. Compartmentalization is not the answer. Integration-—a deliberate striving for it—is. My first conscious experience of being lied to happened when I was a teenager. The culprit was someone I loved and revered. The lie slammed into my belly, rappelled through my limbs and caused such an ache in my heart that when I think about it today, a chill courses through me. I didn’t understand then how a lie—-that I felt then had nothing to do with me—-could hurt so much. I thought myself silly for feeling such blinding anguish. But now I know why. When you lie to someone, you are telling that person he doesn’t matter; that he isn’t worthy of the truth. That’s why the pain of betrayal is annihilating. It is a direct attack on your sense of self. The content of the lie hardly matters. It is the lie itself that wounds. I didn’t understand my pain then. I didn’t see it as the message. I was a teenager in a dark place. Instead, the betrayal taught me that lying is inconsequential. If someone so dear could do it to me (or even around me), then it was par for the course. So I learned to live in the shadows and attracted others like myself. If someone asked me out and I didn’t feel like it, I’d spin a story. If someone drew me into a lie, but between us we had truth, I rationalized it away. It took years and many trials for me to see that truth is the simplest way to live. It was only when I became a mother that I renewed a conscious allegiance to truth. Later, through a crisis of crushing magnitude, it became crystal clear that the only way out of any kind of darkness is to speak and live truthfully. Or die trying. I did it not just for my healing, but so that my children could have a headstart at wholeness. My life—-not just what they see of it, but my life in its entirety—-is their teacher. I cannot impart the value of integrity if I don’t live it. I work on it every moment and constantly ask myself: Did I act truthfully? Was my migraine the real reason I didn’t want to engage in conversation? Or was I angry? Was it anger or hurt? Was I really tired or just lazy? It is a process of un-layering; a constant reminder that truth cannot be rationalized. I realize now that I have been in situations where I have had to unconsciously deal with layers of untruth. Looking back, I know I felt it from the onset—-a heaviness I couldn’t put my finger on--a sense that I was always swimming against a raging but invisible current. Any form of lie weakens that imperceptible moral ground our lives stand on. Over time it takes its toll, not just in our physical bodies (causing illness), but also in the fabric of our life stories. A friend knew her partner was lying to her for years but each time she asked for the truth, he kept silent. She told him she felt the cracks beneath them beginning to grow. They separated shortly after. The cracks had reached their mark. Though they are apart, he continues to live opaquely. His lies still cause such a violent reaction in her because her wounds are so deep they have simply not healed. Lies never shield from pain. They breed the worst kind. Lies rob others of choice. It is insidious. It’s not just verbal lies, but lies that have to do with the very way we live. If we function in layers –one for when we are with our parents, another for when we are with our children, still another for church—-we live out of a very unhygienic inner space; energy murk that we unwittingly unleash on others. Our lies pollute others in the level of the soul, only they are helpless against it because they do not see the full picture and are therefore unable to make clear life decisions. I’ve observed that people who lie have difficulty receiving truth. You can go blue in the face trying to bring clarity into the picture but they are so muddled within that they see only what they choose to. Only their truth is valid; a familiar shadow to hide behind. Truth is a mirror they cannot look into because it demands change. But you cannot be touched by truth and remain the same. If you recognize and accept it, you can never walk the same path again. It could mean monumental loss, mostly of the material kind, but the spiritual gains are immeasurable. People say they cannot tell the truth because they are embarrassed, ashamed and afraid. Though the emotions are valid, choosing to lie is selfish. The minute you realize that every lie is a chain around someone else’s freedom—-not just yours--you will find the strength to stop thinking just of yourself and step boldly into the light. So you have a heavy secret. Keep the secret and you are its prisoner; come clean and those affected will probably be disconsolate. They could hate you and hurl their rage at you. It will get ugly. You probably deserve it, too. But now you are in that sacred, well-lit place of authentic possibility—-the only chance to begin anew. That is the gift of truth. And just like that you are free, owned by nothing and no one. Just like that, you have given others the chance to be free. But first, you had to get over your self-centeredness: fear, shame, embarrassment were all about you. Truth opened your heart and grace leapt in. Now everyone can begin to heal. (Hello, Malacañang?) Truth is the highest recognition of the other. It is a most sacred offering: a measure of mature love. You may still lose someone you love, or she might decide that a person of integrity is worth forgiving. But you were human enough to present the full picture because people you care about are worth it. That is love. It is the only way to make it right. I imagine the heavens playing a special tune each time a patch of darkness on earth is turned to light even if it doesn’t mean a conventional happy ending. What joy! Truth is the Christ-path. It is eternal. In a way, that’s why it is frightening. It is daunting to let go of all your worldly habits and transform yourself. It means being faithful, true to every word you say, responsible and accountable for every deed. It means living resolutely towards wholeness. The light of truth can be harsh and blinding and that is difficult to face, but it is the one sure path to freedom. It is part of the human struggle, I know. Perfection of the soul is not attained automatically, in a single lifetime, and never without pain. It is precisely through this struggle that we can slowly begin to integrate. I think it a beautiful, if difficult, process. It is through peeling the layers that we come to the whole. It is through fragmentation that we can become renewed. It means loss but also spiritual redemption -- and only the clear light of truth can show the way. |
AuthorLyka Ugarte: 1st Runner-Up Mutya ng Pilipinas 1983, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Phil" 1983. Represented the Phil. in "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1984. An Actress, A Model, A Mother, A Corporate Eecutive, A Call Center Agent, A Mother, A Wife, A Partner, A Friend, A Failure, A Survivor! Archives
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