From today’s post to the Jack’s Winning Words blog comes this gem – “Nobody goes through life without a scar.” (Carol Burnett)
Jack went on to write about the scars of life both physical and mental. I remember my mother yelling at me to “stop picking at it; you’ll leave a scar”, when I scratched or picked at a scab that had formed over a wound. I still have a scar on one hand that was left when I got my hand caught in an old washing machine wringer (ask someone old what a wringer was on washing machines).
Not all of life’s scars are physical. In fact, most scars that we can look back upon are 
probably painful memories etched in our minds from “wounds” that we received in life – rejections, bullying, failures or losses of loved ones. Those events in our lives all hurt at the time. Some of these things we may have “picked at” for a long time, resulting in big scars on our souls.
Maybe we just couldn’t let go of that person who rejected us or the loved one that we lost. We couldn’t find a place for them in our memories that wasn’t associated with pain. They left a scar on our lives. Perhaps we could not reach closure and move on to forgiveness for someone that bullied us or hurt us. Maybe we haven’t forgiven ourselves for some failure in life. We keep picking at those things and the scars just gets bigger.
Jack went on to write that Robert Schuler (a favorite of his) used to say, “Turn your scars into stars.” The way that you do that is to stop picking at those scars and focus instead 
on forgiving those who may have caused you that pain or forgiving yourself for some perceived failure. In order to forgive others, you must first be able to forgive yourself. The path to forgiving yourself is accepting that God forgives us all first. Lex Luger put it this way – “God has forgiven me, which I am very thankful for. It has enabled me to forgive myself and move forward one day at a time.”
That doesn’t mean that the scars will go away; they won’t; but, they will take their rightful place in your memories. As Cheryl Rainfield put it – “My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They’re part of my history that’ll always be there.”
Why forgive? Because you must forgive in order to be able to move on with your life.
“When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the 
future.” – Bernard Meltzer. Without forgiveness you get stuck in the past, reliving those pains over and over. So, take my mom’s advice and “stop picking at” those old wounds. Let the scars form, forgive those involved in the pain and then move on.
“Remember, when you forgive, you heal. And when you let go, you grow.” – Haiku and KySSeS
NormsMilfordBlog 