Embracing Your Scars
By Laura Gomez
I know what it feels like to lose your friends when things get difficult and inconvenient. To be lied, tricked, and abused by others. To be laughed at and bullied. To grow up without your father in a distant country. To live an abnormal high school experience. I know what it feels like to move from one state to another without knowing a single soul. To spend your birthday alone. To feel unwelcomed by people from your church community. To lose the person you love.
The list can go on and on for all of us. It is in moments of pain when we are most vulnerable, when the evil one is ready to tempt us in areas where he knows we are weakest. In moments of pain, we are tempted to do everything we can to run away from silence because it is in silence that we realize our identity as loved ones by God.
The world feeds us with all sorts of distractions to temporarily forget our pain—anything from vices, to movies, to overeating. Not all distractions are bad in themselves, they can be really good things. But we can only temporarily forget about our pain for a little while before the cycle repeats itself. What do we turn to when we are desolated? To fully heal, we must come face-to-face with our problem. In moments of great pain, we run as far away from silence as possible because we feel as though being in silence will make the pain more real. The temptation is to hide our pain by making it seem “less real.”
But it is in silence where God can transform our hearts.
Tribulations make it easier to become spiritually desolated. When you do not feel the desire to be healed, or changed, or are swept with negative emotions, pray for the grace to desire it, to say “yes” to God’s free gift of love. Pray for the desire to be healed, changed, transformed by Him.
When you feel lonely, when your heart is broken, when you do not know what else to give, just sit in silence and be open to God’s presence. Talk to Him about your suffering and ask confidently to receive the gift of His love. Read the Psalms which show the great power of hope in Him whom fulfills all His promises.
Things may not change the way you expect them to, but persevere in prayer, “Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Ps 27:14) to transform your heart. All we need is a patient and open disposition of our hearts to receive His gifts from the Holy Spirit. Remain steadfast in prayer, and God will give you a reassuring confidence in knowing that when you come to know Him whom is love itself, you have found it all. And even through tribulations, you will always find rest in Him.
“He heals the brokenhearted,
And binds up their wounds.
He counts the stars and calls them all by name.
How great is our Lord! His power is absolute!
His understanding is without measure!
(Ps 147:3-5).
