Scars- “Living Life to the Full”

Scars- “Living Life to the Full” 

Written By: Mentor Mom Kerry Harris

Ghost writer: Charlene Mossman 

​Scars: everyone has them, and not everyone is healed. Sometimes the things we carry from the past—the struggles, the decisions, and the fears—grow into a silent burden. We try to move on, but sometimes the pain runs too deep. We wish we could cry out for help, but we’re afraid what others would think. What would they say if they knew what I had done, or what has been done to me? 

​Today’s speaker was Yesenia Jamison, wife of her collegesweetheart and mother of four. Yesenia has been on the MOPS leadership team at Big Valley Grace Community Church. When she was planning to speak for our meeting today, she considereda lighter subject, but God put this topic on her heart at the last minute. He asked her to share part of her story, and courageously, she said yes.

​Yesenia grew up in Patterson in a small, tight-knit community. Her family was Catholic and later became a Christian in high school. She enjoyed holding a strong place in her community. Everyone loved her. They didn’t know that for thirteen years, from the age of two, she was being molested by someone in her family. The abuse began before she even knew what it was, but she always knew something didn’t feel right. Growing up, she struggled with acceptance and building friendships. She was trying so hard just to be loved. People always seemed to say, “Come as you are,” but when you come, there was always something they wanted to change. Maybe your hair was the wrong color, or you weren’t wearing the right shoes. Why was she never enough?

​She went to a prestigious Christian college, and while she was there, she found out she was pregnant. Afraid of being kicked out of school, afraid of judgment, and running out of options, she and her boyfriend decided to have an abortion. Yesenia had supported the right-to-life movement in high school and at seventeen, she had even created a list of babies she would adopt. The decision broke her heart. She felt like she was slowly dying inside. Being molested wasn’t her fault, but she knew the abortion was. But she married her boyfriend over a year later and covered up her pain. On the outside, she moved on.

​Yet three years after her marriage, she fell into an affair. It was short. She wasn’t talking about her scars, and her heartache was oozing out under the bandages. She confessed the affair to her husband four years later. When troubles come, they seem to come all at once. A few months after the confession, while she and her husband were in counseling, she found out her mom had been diagnosed with advanced cancer. Her mother was her only confidant. Mom knew about the abuse and the abortion and the affair, yet after each confession, her mother had faithfully extended grace and love. Mom died when Yesenia was seven months pregnant with her third child. 

​Dealing with the loss of her mom took her through deep places of grief. Wounds heal with time, but they leave behind scars. The tissue in scars is tougher than the skin around it, but it holds the memory of pain. Scars are still there, and they still hurt. Many of us struggle to love ourselves and to love others when we’ve been hurt so badly before. We toughen ourselves and put up walls: we refuse to let love hurt us again. Yet love is a two-way street. We can only give what we’re able to receive. If we’re only open to receiving half of our love-capacity, we don’t have much love to extend to others. We have a comfort limit, a threshold we allow people to get close to, but if someone—a friend or a spouse—tries to love us past our limit, we push them away.

​What if we were able to receive just a little more love? Maybe only 1% more. But if you keep adding up 1% here and there, a little at a time, eventually you might reach 100! What would that feel like, being loved and able to love to 100% of our capacity?

​Jesus doesn’t blame us for having scars. He has some of his own. After the cross, God could have taken away Jesus’s scars, yet he chose to let His son keep them. It’s the way Jesus identified himself to his disciples when he returned to them in the secret room. This is who I am, he said. Touch me and feel my scars. This is how much I love you.

​God doesn’t bring hardships and heartaches into our lives on purpose. He isn’t trying to test us or run a quality assurance check on our faith. He allows us to go through it and we might never know why. But the things we throw into the compost pile can become a source of fertilizer for a new story. Yesenia had a mentor who told her, “You’re a book on a shelf no one has opened, but it has the best story because it was written by the best author.” Acknowledgement is power, not a weakness. We usually hide our junk from the public. We don’t want our family or friends or Facebook to see what we’re really struggling with on the inside. It’s dark. It’s angsty and venomous. That’s why it’s so important to let it out. And when we do, it’s one step we can take in our journey to live more fully.

​Yesenia offered three points on ways to live life beyond our borders:

1. Acknowledgement of the past. It happened. We can’t change it. Owning our story is the first step we take toward healing. 

2. Recovery from the hurt. There’s no prescription for this one. Sometimes it takes years. We don’t know when it will ever end, but Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 NLT

3. Allowing yourself to be used. This is the fun one. In God’s timing, He will bring people and circumstances around us and use our story to encourage others. He can use us even when we don’t feel perfect. Yesenia was asked to be a MOPS leader even while she was still carrying around her burdens. God knows what He’s doing, and He believes in us, even when we don’t. “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 NIV

She closed out her story by reminding us how important it is to cultivate friendships (like at MOPS!) where we can be vulnerable and real. Life is too messy to be lived alone. Your closet will become your coffin. Recovery is a scary process. Sometimes we’ve been in pain so long, we don’t remember who we are without it. What if we don’t like who we are without the pain? Yesenia reminded us that we were born without scars or pain. That’s our natural state: why not give it a try? You’re not changing who you are, you’re just rebooting. 

She also encouraged us to allow ourselves to have success. What do you love? What are you really good at? When you do what God called you to do, that honors him. It fills you with joy and it makes Him proud, if He can be more proud of you than He already is. Own your success. With a humble heart, of course, but don’t be afraid to be amazing. 

So now we have a challenge. She asked us to try something this week: for thirty seconds at a time, try to live fully. Put your phone down and pay attention to your son or daughter for thirty seconds. Be present in the moment, commit to thirty seconds of life without distractions or a to-do list. And maybe next week you can try it for a minute, and the week after that, for two minutes. We have control over living fully, we just chose not to. If this sounds off or it feels like too much, just ask God to show you what He thinks is best for you. There’s grace for that. He knows you and He knows where you’re at. Maybe having coffee with a good friend or a mentor and sharing your story is the step you can take. You might be surprised at the compassion you’ll receive from the right person!

Yesenia finished by sharing the lyrics to a worship song you might remember: 

The nails in Your hands

The nails in Your feet

tell me how much You love me.

The thorns on Your brow

They tell me how

You bore so much shame to love me.

And when the Heavens pass away

All Your scars will still remain

And forever they will say

Just how much You love me.

​

Wherever you are, God loves you. We love you here at MOPS. Don’t be afraid to start your story over again—you might like the new version better!