Scars That Shows Strength

“Until certain point – pain and scar are not frightening, but become an entry point to testify how God works through it. When you see it that way, you will feel more beautiful and strong! Only by God’s grace.” (LbA)

Let me tell you a story about my dotted scars on both of my knees. I have problem with this part of my body (my knee) since my teenager. It’s big and remind me to Flintstones’s stick and I use to say that it’s more like ‘betis abang becak’ than betis a woman. All my teenage year I grew up with a believe that those calves are ugly!

Yes there you go… and then comes those black doted scars – I’ve been struggling with those scars for sometime. It makes my calves even uglier than before. For months I hide it with trousers, stocking, or long skirt – I told people that I like wearing it but I know deep inside I want to cover something that really hurt my self image.

I know maybe I was too much but I couldn’t stop that feeling. I thought it was a simple thing that I have to learn to accept – I live with border line diabetis and as a medical doctor I know that those scars will stay after I recover from wounds. But still that knowledge didn’t help me to make peace with it at all.

Then I asked God to help me deal with it. I quite hesitant to do that at first – I mean hey this only a scar issue and it located on my calves, not on my face, I feel too much to bring it to a prayer. But I did it anyway – hey nothing to loose, it’s ‘only’ a prayer.

But then something happen slowly but sure.

Somehow God reminds me to the cause of those black doted scars. I got bites from Sand Flies when I did my Inca Trail at Machu Pichu. I went to Cusco Peru for a social project help women to get tested for Cervical Cencer Screening. It was a 2 weeks mission and at the end of the mission the people from clinic took us to Machu Pichu. They told us about the possibility of Sand Flies bites (read:https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g294318-i3352-k1480029-Bug_bites_from_MP-Machu_Picchu_Sacred_Valley_Cusco_Region.html) but me and my ignorance – I thought : “Aahhh it just a bug. I have mosquito biting me all my life and I am ok…” That ignorance lead me to a struggle yeahhh stubborn me!

God reminds me that I got that wounds when I did a mission to live a passion that God gave in my heart.

Yes it’s messy and gross (you should see it when it still infected) and it became scars but every time I look at that Black Doted “Flintstones’s Stick” Scars, it reminds me how God is faithful to me, how God’s grace fill me with courage to travel 17,800km to meet God’s people there and sharing life with them. For me this scar become a sign of how God loves me and He wants me to be happy.

Yes until certain point – pain and scar are not frightening, but become an entry point to testify how God works through it. When you see it that way, you will feel more beautiful and strong!

Only by God’s grace.