Before my relationship w\God had (seriously) started, I lived my life by the manly mantra:

Very shallow, selfish, and yet... fun. Everything was met with a fervent expectation that you didn't have fun unless blood was somehow expelled - Didn't matter what you were doing: Mountain biking, trailrunning, swimming, making dinner.... whatever! Unless you bled, it wasn't worth it!

God made us so that our body can heal, and in some cases, a scar remains. Some people (or fools such as myself) are proud of their scars, but other s may try to hide them. But what about the scars we collect in life that rest upon our hearts, fears, or insecurities? Where I spent most of my life proud of the dumb scars on my physical self, I did my best to ignore the ones inside of me.

Jesus had scars. He loved us so much that He allowed His perfect body to be scarred, just like the rest of us. And it's those scars that are very much a part of His transformed identity, just as our scars are a part of ours.

All of the outer and, more importantly, inner scars are things that make each of us who we are today. It's something we shouldn't hide, ignore or cover up. Grieve the loss or hurt, process the pain & the circumstances that caused them, so we can truly understand how God's been with us, loves us & has a plan for us. While no amount of reflection will justify the suffering we've been through, God will help us move beyond the suffering. We can see where we came from, and have been resurrected into a person transformed by the grace of God, in spite of the experiences that tried to keep us down.