Valleys and Scars

 What do you do when your soul is broken open and the only way you know how to heal it is to write, but it seems all of the words you normally have are strangling in the lump in your throat and your heart can’t seem to handle one sentence?

What do you do when your heart breaks and you want to run and hide but you have people depending on you and daily duties that can’t go undone, and your heart is pounding but you can’t stop to think?

What do you do when you long for a friend to share you burden but all of your friends are either too busy with their own burdens, don’t want to know, or don’t know how to share yours?

I guess the only answer there is, is the Answer Himself—Christ’s own broken heart that heals us, his own scars that speak into the darkness and the wounded hands that hold us on those long nights when no one else can see us cry. He’s the one friend who’s always been there for me, who continues to lead me through valleys and streams and deserts, who is strong enough to carry all of the burdens no one wants to hold for me. He tells me to climb on his back and take his yoke, welcomes my pain in his gentle and lowly way. He knows my heart more intimately than any friend or husband, and he sees my pain so vividly, enters into it, and engulfs me in his own scarred heart to remind me I’m not alone.

I have to hold on tightly to that every day, knowing that living will bring scars, but also rewards. His hand will guide me wherever I go, into the valleys and onto the mountain peaks.