Scars and all

by Eliska Redelinghuys

Last night I woke up from my sleep…. you know that feeling when you are constantly repeating something over and over in your head and it feels like you are going over the same thing discussing and dissecting it in more and more detail, like you are trying to rehearse a speech or something?

I was thinking about the story Christy Herselman had shared at church on Sunday about us swimming with dolphins on Saturday morning. You can read more about our experience here. Christy spoke about how God doesn’t want to know us from a distance but rather wants an up-close, personal relationship with us. As I lay in my bed, I kept thinking of this one thing I wanted to add to that, to the point where I got up out of bed, switched the light on and wrote it down……so here it is.

When one of the dolphins was swimming next to me, I noticed lots of little scars all over his body. Those scars made me wonder where those dolphins had been in their lives, what they had experienced, dangers and obstacles that they had overcome. It could have been due to bad decisions they made, being where they were taught not to be or doing something they knew was wrong. Maybe they were pushing the boundaries and checking out the unknown. Or maybe noble things they had done, like acts of courage and sacrifice, had left those scars on their bodies.

But whatever it might have been, good or bad, we didn’t once look at those scars on their bodies as something ugly or as an imperfection. It didn’t matter to us. We were just so glad to experience that moment with them and were so glad that they gave us that opportunity to enter their world and spend time with them. If anything, those scars just made them more real and intriguing.

I believe that is exactly how God looks at us. We all have our own physical and emotional scars but that doesn’t matter to God at all. He is just so happy when we come to him to spend time with him and be in his presence. He doesn’t care how many scars we have, He’s just so overjoyed that we come to him and want to spend time with him. We don’t have to be perfect. He’s so gracious and forgiving and loves us just as we are, scars and all.