Healed Wounds Still Have Scar Tissue

Saturday, my wife and I sat at the funeral of our dear friend's father. What started as a reminder of what I left behind a few years ago unexpectedly encouraged me with something the pastor said during the eulogy. He made a statement that I quickly reconfigured into what I heard: "healed wounds still have scar tissue." I had left my phone at home and asked my wife to text it to me as soon as it occurred to me. It caught me so off guard, and it felt like a whisper entered my ears and soothed my soul. It felt like the confirmation I needed that I didn't know that I did.

As we saw and spoke with people that we hadn't seen in ages, it was a reminder of how fast time flies. All our children are either off to college or have children of their own. I've heard that time heals all wounds. And while some people would agree with that statement, I didn't. Up until that moment, time had only contributed to the detriment of those negative thoughts. But at that moment, what he said made so much sense. At the end of the day, the focus should be on the healing, not the process.

When I was 13, I had my appendix taken out, and I had a scar to prove it. I also had a defibrillator implanted, and that also left a scar. Those scars don't hurt anymore. I don't think about it daily, and they don't limit what I can do. But they're still there, a permanent reminder of a time when my body was in crisis, when I was vulnerable, when I needed help. The scar tissue isn't a sign of weakness; it's evidence of survival. It's proof that my body knew how to heal itself, even when I couldn't control the process.

The same is true for the wounds that aren't visible. The betrayals, the losses, the moments when life knocked the wind out of me, they've all left their marks. For years, I thought healing meant forgetting, that wholeness required erasing the past. I believed that if I could still feel the tenderness of old hurts, if I could still see the scars they left behind, then I hadn't truly healed. I was wrong.

Healing doesn't mean returning to exactly who you were before. It means becoming someone who can carry the weight of what happened without being crushed by it. I read somewhere that the scar tissue is tougher than the original skin, more resilient. It's been tested by fire and found strong enough to hold.

I think about the people I've hurt and the people who've hurt me. I think about the relationships that didn't survive, the trust that was broken, the words that can't be taken back. Those wounds have healed, but the scar tissue remains. And maybe that's exactly as it should be. Maybe the scars are there to remind us of our capacity to endure, to grow, to choose healing over bitterness.

The pastor didn't know he was speaking directly to my heart that day. He couldn't have known that his words would unlock something in me that I'd been struggling to understand for years. But sometimes that's how grace works, it finds us in funerals and hospital waiting rooms, in ordinary moments that become extraordinary because we're finally ready to receive what we need to hear.

I'm learning to be grateful for my scars, both visible and invisible. They're not flaws to be hidden or failures to be ashamed of. They're evidence of battles fought and won, of a life lived fully enough to require healing. They're proof that I'm still here, still standing, still capable of love and hope and growth.

The next time someone tells me that time heals all wounds, I might just agree with them. I heard a pastor say healed wounds still have scar tissue, and I understood that's not a limitation, it's a testament to our resilience. It's a reminder that we're stronger than we think, more capable of healing than we dare to believe, and that our scars are not signs of our brokenness but proof of our wholeness.

Some wounds change us forever, and maybe that's exactly what they're supposed to do.