Hurt. It’s a fact of life that we learn early. It’s like a skinned knee that never seems to heal because you keep running and falling on it again and again. You could stop running and prop that leg up to let it rest, but life keeps on moving so you keep moving too. With every bend of the knee, you feel it. The scab is almost complete and the itching proves healing is coming, but life. It knocks you down once more and you bust open that healing wound again. 

Maybe it’s not a skinned knee like you got on the playground in a game of chase, but maybe it’s a heart that seems to split wide open again and again with problems much deeper than you could have imagined in elementary school. The gushing feeling of heartache and heartbreak hits again and you don’t know how you will heal this time. 

My hand is raised high and I get it. 2018 was a hard year and I’m just now feeling the scab start to itch showing signs of healing. Little by little I’ve faced reality and let my heart race again.

I’m running and it feels good. Not in a literal sense of feet moving hard against the pavement, but in a spiritual sense. My heart that sat in a fog of grief and shock is pumping and and able to feel alive again. When you lose someone you love, grief does not go away. It just changes. 

As my heart begins to feel renewed and awake, it doesn’t mean I don’t miss what was or long for another day of what seems normal. What it does mean is that I can see through the thick clouds of the pain and feel the fresh breeze of a new day on my face again for the first time in a long time.

It’s good to be back. 

But I don’t want to fool you into thinking I’m my old self again. I never will be. Loss changes us. So I’m new. And I hope you will be able to welcome the new me with my new scars. I know you have scars, too, so we have common ground. 

While life moves along and we all pretend like the hard stuff in life is behind us, let’s not ignore the scars: for in them we find a new us. And it’s actually a better version than before. So as we change and grow, and peel back the layers of life, let’s let each other in, no matter how broken or scarred. 

Where are you in this race of life?

Are you running? 

Maybe itching for healing that is almost complete? 

Or perhaps you’ve sat down to rest because life is just too hard in this season. 

I get it. Let yourself take time to heal. And then get back up when you can see through the fog. I promise you will see through it again. Keep looking for the sun to break through. 

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

Love & Blessings,