scars.

Andre Maurois once said, "A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body." Can't say Andre was off target. The past. A chain of memories, victories, heartbreaks, triumph, and shame. I once heard it said that a truly single-minded person's life can be summed up in one word. If my past were any clue, my word is schizophrenic.

What is so amazing about my past (since I cannot speak for anyone else) is how little good I choose to recall or remember. Life is like a continual first-date, rehearsing the answers you have to different questions about where you came from and where you are going. When I meet a new person that I hope to make as friend, immediately future conversations start running through my head. "What will they think when they hear I did this?" "What will they say when they found out I dated them?" "How can I explain that?" It's like a job interview without parking validation or a 401 K. I feel that there is no way one can embrace my past or overlook it on the way to seeing my future. I couldn't help but wonder: Why are we so obsessed with the past?

I'll be the first to say that I have screwed up royally on many fronts of my life. I've said no when I should have said yes and vice versa. I've chosen the wrong friends, path, and ways to spend my money. I've dated boys that left me feeling damaged and insecure. I've hurt my physical body in the name of beauty. Why would anyone want to be my friend...much less, why would God want to use anyone like me??

I have started making goals for my 26th year of life. One of my priorities is to start and finish a book I have felt inspired to write since I was nineteen years old. Although I don't want to give the details away (since I don't even know them), I want to write about identity. The last 26 years of my life have seemed to be a nonstop search for acceptance both from others and ultimately myself. While I have overcome so many obstacles of the past, however, a frightening truth came to me this week: If I really write this book, I have to start living like I believe what it says.

It's amazing how frightening the truth is. I have struggled with feelings of inadequacy, insuffciency, and self-hatred since I was very young. These were the feelings and emotions that drove me to a place of self-destruction and self-gratification. Since then I have buried myself in what the Word of the Lord says about me and to me, counseling others going through similar trials. But how much of all of it am I REALLY buying?? My heart says, not enough. I know the truth, but I won't let it set me free. I've lived so long battling insecurity I don't know what I would be without it. Rather than allowing my past failures, mistakes, and heartbreaks to enhance my testimony, I use them to sink further into my familiar and comfortable bed of hating myself and feeling worthless. "I've messed up too much, God couldn't use me if He wanted." "Sure, at one point in my life there was a divine purpose for my existence, but I messed that up so I am going to settle for serving the Lord in the hole I've dug for myself."

Thoughts race through my mind at least 10 times a minute about how inadequate I am or how overly-qualified someone else is. Comparison is one of the hallmarks of insecurity and that seems to explain a lot. I've lived to compare myself to everyone and everything except what the word of God says about me. But more than that, I have compared myself to my own past, and that past to the perception of what a person should be. I come out looking scarred, used up, and defeated.

Tonight I got to thinking about my father's sermon on Sunday. He preached out of Hosea (props to any minister preaching from the minor prophets), about God making the Valley of Achor (literally "trouble") a "door of hope." The children of Israel, like Gomer, like me...had scars. They had forsaken Yahweh, they had made plans for themselves and the plans had failed. I think we need to be reminded, however, that our past does not determine our future and our present doesn't determine our end.

I felt called of God when I was eight years old to preach. I was steadfast in this plan until I was about 20, then life happened. I was disappointed. I got sick. I was deceived in a very abusive relationship. Finally, I gave up. Too many bad things were being harbored in my past for God to use me in the way He wanted to. But, just like Hosea, the past I bring to the table will be the hope that brings others to Christ and to freedom through me. It is easy to look at your past and judge yourself because we are very good at judging others, but when we do this we take on the idea we know the mind of God.

I am reminded of the verse in Isaiah 55 that talks about how much higher the ways of God are than ours. That maybe God's conception of justice, of mercy, of grace, is much higher, greater, and more advanced than ours could ever be. Maybe, just maybe God's hand was in the middle of my seemingly chaotic life the entire time, and I've never been so in step with His will than now, using my scars to help others who are hurting.

George Bernard Shaw once said, "We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but the responsibility for our future." I have a responsibility to not let my past ruin the plan of God or the lives I am meant to touch with the message of the identity only found through Christ.

It would probably scare us to see the change that could be wrought in our world if we'd chop our scars up to battle wounds, and keep fighting.