Sam Connour | Lo Sy Lo

Stewards of Our Scars Years ago, while Frederick Buechner was speaking to a group of Christians at a Texas retreat, he recounted a painful incident from his childhood. Afterward, a man named Howard Butt approached him and said, “You have had a good deal of pain in your life, and you have been a good steward of it.” His words took Buechner aback. He had never thought of pain, and its impact on his life, in terms of stewardship. But the more he reflected on what it means to be a steward, the more he realized how true the man’s words had been. Later, he wrote, “If you manage to put behind you the painful things that happen to you as if they never really happened or didn’t really matter all that much when they did, then the deepest and most human things you have in you to become are not apt to happen either.” Whatever sufferings we have endured, self-inflicted or otherwise, are scars our Father has granted us as a sacred duty. Stewards do not own that for which they are responsible; they are called to faithfully manage what another has given them. Our scars are God’s gifts to us. They are the means Jesus uses not to anchor us to the past but to propel us into the future as those who know the wounding power and healing grace of God. -from my book, Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul