It's Thursday evening and I'm sitting in my home trying to do anything but sit down and type these words.Yes, I love to write and I absolutely love words.And I really do want to tell you what my heart is feeling but the truth is I've been having a terrible time putting them into words lately.And the past few weeks I've stumbled multiple times over my words and walked away from conversations wondering what I've just spoken.So please if you run into me and find I'm not answering your questions well or don't seem like myself...please know-I'm not.Because truthfully, I've been feeling quite off.Its as if my brain and my heart aren't communicating much these daysand I'm struggling to fill in the blanks.It's not the first time I remember feeling a bit like this but back then it lasted for years...When I was younger one of my biggest fears laid deep below...You see, what's being lived underneath is often where so much of stories really live...and honestly for years I tried to hide what laid beneath the surface.I was embarrassed and even afraid of being found out or even worse becoming known.I was scared I would be someone no one would like.I terribly feared I'd be overlooked or unseen.All this laid deep within the secret spaces of my soul where I was grossly insecure about not being enough.It was the giant-size insecurity that keeps people from becoming who God designed them to be.I can remember not knowing what was up or down simply because I didn't know myself, instead I armored myself protecting what laid deep inside.But then years passed and all of the sudden this thing happened and I realized something different about myself...I'd grown.What once drove me no longer had a voice inside my head.Those tapes I'd played for years had been erased and truth was recorded over what once spoke only lies...As she began unfolding her story on the other side of the table I felt my heart attaching itself to hers.So many of the details told pieces of my story and I wondered how I ended up sitting where I was.You see her story could've just as easily belonged to me.But it didn't...Clearly something happened in the last thirty years for my life to be going in the direction it was.I wonder if it was the blessing my Mom often prayed over me as I ran out the door or the way she and my Dad chose to give up their old way of living for a life of following God.I wonder if it was the quiet prayers they daily spoke asking God to watch over their family.I wonder if it was the times I pleaded for God to set me free from my insecurities and fill my empty spaces.Or perhaps it was all of this and so much more....You see, we don't really know the extent of prayers said on our behalf...and if we ever need reminded it's in moments like this when we see just how much God's been walking with us...I think this thing has been teaching me so much of what it means to be truly known and loved all at the same time.As people have been vulnerably unfolding their stories with us lately I've been seeing how beautiful they wear their scars.I know we live such filtered insta-stories where there's really not a safe place to speak of battle wounds.But the amazing thing is our scars tell brave stories of survival.They tell of warriors and honestly we all have these kinds of stories if we're willing to speak this kind of raw vulnerability.Friend, I'm realizing so much about the power in sharing scars these days and how it allows others a safe place to pull up their sleeves and share a bit of their own story, maybe even fresh wounds they're still trying to heal..It's here life really is bravely lived when we choose to share our scars as proof of the brave battle we're fighting and living to tell about...this sweet one, is where God truly gets glorified through the healing of our scars.Because nothing speaks louder than how someone survived something so devastating and is here to tell their brave story now.