Sacredly Scarred

December 21, 2017

I’m about to load my car to head to 4 Arrows Ranch for Christmas.  The lump in my throat keeps me from breathing as the reality of a Tyler’s absence is so present in my heart.  Trusting the restoration of all things will be beyond anything I can comprehend!  This Christmas season I will celebrate the fact that my youngest Arrow is complete in true form and understands the mystery of God in His fullness!

December 21, 2018

Thank you to google photos this morning and me “rediscovering” this day…Our tree last year pretty much summed up how I felt!

Our selection of trees was limited in Pittsburg, TX just 4 days before Christmas.  This was our winner, gaping hole in the side, less than full foliage, and not nearly tall enough to claim magnificent.  Austyn said it was too ugly, Connor said it was too skinny, Hudson said it was too short. Ryan looked at me with some doubt, and as I felt some tears building up, I reassured them all that I would make it beautiful, full, and taller than it appeared! 

Secretly, it was the worst tree I’d seen, but the only one they had.  It summed up how I felt approaching the season…a gaping wound in my heart, empty handed, and beat down.  How could anything beautiful come from the absence of a child; especially at Christmas?   

Why is this season harder?  I imagine most parents enjoy giving gifts to their children.  I know I do!  The sincere enjoyment of even seeing a wrapped present under the tree is almost good enough for them! They’ve done nothing to deserve the gifts.  The gifts  are simply chosen, wrapped, and delivered in order for our children to express excitement and delight.  It is so much like grace.  The ultimate gift. 

Have you found yourself threatening your child with  the old familiar tune, “he sees you when you’re sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake”? Knowing good and well that you will,  no matter what they do, lavish each and every gift into their undeserving lap?! 

We lavish gifts and celebrate the extravagant at Christmas time because He lavished His grace on us; it’s why we celebrate Christmas.  It’s why I want to allow my children to experience the over indulgence of receiving gifts that I chose specifically for them!   Grace is underserved favor.  It’s designed specifically for us.  It’s a gift that is so freely given by God and delivered directly into our undeserving hearts!  Especially the hearts of the ones that wear a gaping hole because of the heartaches in this world.  It seems that I understand that gift of grace even more so because of my wounds, empty arms, and beat down frame.  

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

Psalm 34:18

Why is it that a broken person yields such fascination from outsiders?  When stripped of pride and humbled to our knees we become so appealing to the world.  I have found this to be true.  When I was whole, full, and stood tall I was not approached from outsiders like I am now.  Heartache causes the human heart to stop in wonderment or compassion.  It’s why bottlenecking occurs on a highway when an accident has happened.  People stop in obsessive curiosity or out of deep compassion.  

Do you ever wonder if that’s why Jesus came as He did?  As an infant, in a feeding trough and a man of many sorrows.  Had He come in a golden laid palace do you suppose the general masses would have regarded Him as approachable?  Had He entered this world with every material possession, the curiosity of the public at large would have virtually been non-existent.  They would have acknowledged Him as royalty and “out-of-touch” with reality, potentially a good king but not able to relate to the common man.  

“…He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”

Isaiah 53:2-3 

This is how He is described, and this was by His design!  He came to rescue the  broken, lost, rejected heart.  He desired to be so relatable to human kind that even his appearance was less than common…some would say, “ugly.” His appearance however, would be no representation of His heart’s ability!  He left Heaven’s luxury and entered the gaping wounds of earth’s misery; He encountered the fullness of fellowship with the Trinity and left knowing that He would be forsaken by His Father; He was enthroned with glory and left to be beaten, bruised, plucked, mocked, spat upon, disfigured, tortured, and then hung to suffocate on a tree…all in order to lavish us with grace, rescue us from ourselves, and make us beautiful in His sight. 

The appearance of our tree last year still chokes me up a bit.  The undeniable lack luster of its appearance is such a representation of my heart.  Yet, the holes, the emptiness, the lowliness in which the Lord is able to fill and I am able to receive  because of His grace leave a new beauty; One that is more desirable in His sight as my pride begins to vanish and my knees begin to fall.  

It’s merely a tree, but the response from my doubting family concerning it’s end beauty was confirmation that in time and in the intentional hands of the Creator there is no doubt that He can turn any ugly, broken, aching heart into something beautiful. 

“I am convinced and confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will continue to perfect and complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.“

Philippians 1:6

If your wounds this season are fresh and still gushing, or your arms still remain empty, or you feel so beat down that you wonder how you will make it through the end of the day…I pray that you will receive the message He delivered…full of grace, in order to fill your emptiness and voids…

“Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.”

Isaiah 53:4-5 

By His grace you are rescued, by His wounds you are healed.