The Editor
Have you ever wanted to edit out a part of your life?
Maybe you had a particularly embarrassing experience which you would love to simply vanish as if it had never happened. Maybe there was a broken or toxic relationship with a person you now wish had never been in your life to begin with. Maybe you had a particularly painful or hurt filled experience that still hurts every time you think about it. As we grow, our lives become littered with embarrassing experiences, broken relationships and hurt filled moments—people and memories we often wish we could remove from our lives.
But we can’t.
That doesn’t stop us from trying. We hide the hurts and the pains and the brokenness, putting on a mask every time we go out in public. Our social media pages are full of smiles and laughs and fun times as we work to make people believe we are fun and interesting and happy. We forget (or ignore) that it takes all of our emotions and experiences to make up the fullness of life. As the great NC State basketball coach Jim Valvano once said, “To me there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think -- spend some time in thought. Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears. If you laugh, think and cry, that's a heck of a day.”
Everything we have done, felt, and experienced has made us who we are today, and will continue to shape us as we grow. All of it is important to who we are. Not only that, God is present in every moment—the good, the bad, and everything in between—reaching out in grace and love, providing hope and support, and simply helping us pick up the broken pieces.
Yet, some moments feel irredeemable. Murder. Rape. Sudden and unexplainable death. I won’t pretend to have the words to say in those situations—oftentimes there are no words that can be said. But even in the darkest of dark moments, God is still there with us, holding us, reminding us we are loved no matter what. No, that doesn’t fix what happened. We still may wish more than anything to erase those experiences from our lives, but what has happened can’t be taken back. In this broken world we live in, sometimes all we can do is hold on to the love and grace of God.
In their song “Where the Light Shines Through” John and Timothy Foreman (of the band Switchfoot) write:
You try to keep the wound camouflaged, and
The stitches heal, but the years are lost, and
Another bottle on the shelf can't numb the pain
Why're you running from yourself now?
You can't run away
Cause your scars shine like dark stars
Yeah, your wounds are where the light shines through
So let's go there, to that place where
We sing these broken prayers where the light shines through
The wound is where the light shines through
Yeah, the wound is where the light shines through
Our scars can heal over time, but they don’t vanish. No matter what we try to do to hide the things that have happened, the scars remain ever-present—constant reminders. Yet often it’s in these moments—through these scars—that the grace and love of God becomes truly evident. The “broken prayers” we sing are a result of the scars that are present. The light of God shines through the wounds we collect through life, showing us “a vision of grace”.
We can’t edit out any part of our life, but we can choose to look to God in all parts of our lives and give thanks for the love and grace and presence of God in every moment.