Redefining Healing

Glorious Scars

As Katherine lay in the intensive care unit in the weeks following her stroke, Jay found deep solace in reading and re-reading the book of Job, which tells the story of a man who lived through the worst tragedies imaginable. Job 5:18 in particular lodged itself in Jay’s spirit with this poignant and weighty truth: “For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal.”

This verse bears enormous theological implications and contradicts our ideas of God as only good and wounds as only bad. Job bears witness to the fact that wounding and healing are not opposites but rather two points on a single spectrum. Healing cannot happen without wounding. Jay thought about how Katherine’s neurosurgeon decided to cause paralysis by severing some of her cranial nerves for the greater purpose of stopping the hemorrhage in her brain. He wounded her in order to heal her.

After eleven major surgeries, a few sets of stitches in the ER, and countless falls, Katherine has earned her share of scars. Each fading pink mark across her skin reminds us of the wound that was made and the hurt that happened, the prayers for complete restoration that went unanswered and the disappointment that life turned out differently than we’d hoped. But when we allow our paradigm of healing to shift, her scars begin to look like badges of honor. She can proudly point to this old wounded place and say, “I’m scarred, but I’m still here.”

Is it possible that God is doing the same good, hard work in us—carefully wounding and faithfully healing, intentionally injuring and compassionately binding up? While the hurting may seem long and the healing slow, we can be sure of this: He never wounds us more deeply than He can heal us. May we trace the lines of our glorious scars and recall the Healer’s faithfulness in our personal overcoming, as well as Jesus’ sacrifice in the ultimate overcoming of death and darkness. May we look upon our scars and see His scars—life-giving, heart-healing badges of honor.