Show Me Your Glory

Sharing your story is never easy.

Even when you're sharing with trusted friends, sisters of a kind, comrades...it still isn't easy to display your scars and retell the battle.

It always amazes me how all the emotion is still there, but without the hurt, or pain, or anger. Only the beauty remains. Only the truth reverberates.

Healing.

Wholeness.

Reconciliation.

Why do you think that is? When we look back on a story of wrongs and hurts and disappointments, a story aged and weathered and known by heart, how is it that forgiveness has left the emotions, still raw, but not the feelings?

I guess that's what the saying, "Forgive, but don't forget," means.

When I was younger, and bitter over life's unfairness, I would think to myself, "Never forget because it will happen again and you will need to protect yourself."

Oh, how wrong I was.

That's not why we don't forget. Not at all.

We don't forget because it's a beautiful remembrance. It honors our experiences, deepens our love and compassion.

Much like observing Good Friday. We never forget. Forgive? Yes, even Jesus forgave while hanging battered and bruised from the cross. And so we forgive. But forget? Never.

Remember.

We remember to join in with the suffering.

We remember to celebrate the victory that came three long days later.

The moments in our own lives of death and pain and sacrifice, we remember for the same reasons. There is beauty in the suffering where forgiveness has been spoken because we've lived the grace that comes next. We've celebrated the victory when we've joined with Jesus in making all things new.

I love that my tears still fall for old wounds.

I'm thankful God has allowed me to never forget.

I'm grateful He has given me safe places to tell my story.

I'm hopeful that my friends walking the hard road now will see a light at the end of the tunnel, a road to peace and forgiveness and freedom.

I'm praying for their wounds to be bound up and healed by a Savior who rescues and redeems.

I know it's possible.

I have the scars to prove it, and they're beautiful.