Scars

So today I went to a mini girls retreat. It was amazing. Besides the shaving cream war, the yummy food, the wonderful worship, and an interesting never ending game of darts, there was also a great message.
A message, that I (and I'm sure everyone else), needed to hear. It just goes to show you how God lays certain things on people's hearts.
The message was on hurt, and pain, and wounds, and ulitmatley leading to forgivness. What is true forgivness? How do we forgive people who have hurt us so many times in so many ways?
Mrs. Quann did a great job on explaining these subjects. She listed personal things, how she came to forgive, and how she learned what it really means to forgive. For instance, when you forgive someone, you shouldn't look back at those past times with hate, or anger, or even pain. What went on is just a part of your past, it happened, but you can learn from it. And that God is always there, He never forsakes His children.
We also heard a story (while listening to Pride and Prejudice music :]) about how we sometimes collect hurt, our pains. How we don't take them to our Father. Sometimes we have a reason to feel these pains and hurts, but sometimes we sort of make them up. People don't always mean to treat others the way they do, and we take it to heart. But the truth is, we have probably treated others like that too. Hurting someone without even thinking about it. Being inconsiderate, selfish, rude, distracted, and many other things. But we may not realize this is how we are treating people, even ones close to us. So when we are treated that way, we must be gracious, because we are no better. We must not stop loving, for God never stops loving us.
I realized tonight, that God can heal our wounds, even the ones we don't think about often, but are still there deep down. He turns them into scars, which are stronger and tougher than the skin before. God never leaves us, even when we are hurting, we just have to look and see where He is.