From Trauma to Redeemed Narrative

Scars speak.

Not with words audible to the ear, but with a language that resonates in the depths of the soul. Every scar tells a story: a moment of pain, an inflicted wound, a trauma experienced.

But who has the right to interpret that story?

Do you remember the pit? Deep, dark, cold. Stone walls too steep to climb. And above you, circled against the sky, faces you should have been able to call "brothers." Faces now deformed by hatred, illuminated by cruel smiles as they tore away your multicolored tunic, symbol of your father's love.

The pit was not the culmination, but only the beginning. Then came the chains. The slave market. The hands that pawed at you like merchandise. The eyes that assessed you like cattle. Your identity reduced to a price.

Then Potiphar's house. The false sense of security. The lie that dragged you into a prison even darker, even deeper than the first pit.

Years of waiting. Of broken hopes. Of forgotten promises.

If someone had asked Joseph, in those very long years of darkness, what was the narrative of his life, what story his scars told, what would he have answered?

"They are the story of abandonment. Of betrayal. Of injustice. They are proof that no matter how faithful you are, the world will crush you anyway. They are the demonstration that dreams die and promises dissolve in the air like mist in the sun."

And he would have had every human reason to interpret his story this way.

But Joseph did not have the final word on the interpretation of his scars. It was not he who wrote the final chapter of his narrative.

Years later, standing before his terrified brothers, now prostrate at his feet, he spoke words that should have been impossible: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20, NIV).

He did not minimize the evil suffered. He did not erase the trauma with a spiritual eraser. He did not deny the reality of the inflicted pain.

But he refused to let trauma have the last word on his story.

In an act of spiritual courage that takes your breath away, Joseph looked at his scars and chose to read in them not only the story of the evil suffered, but also – and above all – the story of emerging good. Not only the narrative of human betrayal, but also of divine triumph. Not only the account of the fall into the pit, but also of the ascent to the throne.

It was the same life. The same scars. The same traumatic events. But interpreted through a radically different lens.

Every human life is a story being written. Every soul carries the scars of falls, betrayals, disappointments, traumas. But the crucial question is: who is writing the interpretation of that story? Who is deciding what those scars mean?

Too often, we allow the trauma itself to become the narrator. We let the wound define not just a moment of our life, but our entire identity. We allow a painful chapter to determine the theme of the entire book.

"I am a failure." "I am abandoned." "I am irreparably damaged." "I am defined by my biggest mistake."

These are not objective truths. They are interpretations. They are narratives we have allowed trauma to write on the surface of our soul.

But they are not the only possible interpretation. They are not the only available narrative.

Imagine a broken glass fragment, sharp, dangerous, apparently only good for being thrown away. Now imagine that fragment taken in the hands of an artist, inserted into a stained glass window, traversed by sunlight. What was a symbol of destruction becomes part of a greater beauty. Not despite its brokenness, but right through it.

The glass hasn't changed. It's still broken. But its meaning has been completely transformed.

So it is with the scars of your soul.

The traumatic events of your life are real. The wounds you have suffered are authentic. The pain you have experienced is not an illusion. But the meaning of those experiences is not written in stone. The narrative of your life is not immutably carved into your biography.

Paul understood this when he wrote those bold, almost shocking words in their breadth: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28, NIV).

All things. Not just the beautiful things. Not just the successes. Not just the moments of light. But also – and perhaps especially – the falls, the failures, the betrayals, the traumas. Everything is woven into a larger tapestry, into a vaster narrative, into a redemption story that transcends and transforms the evil suffered without ever denying or minimizing it.

This is the miracle of the redeemed narrative: it doesn't erase the scars, but transforms their meaning. It doesn't deny the trauma, but refuses to allow it to have the last word. It doesn't minimize the evil suffered, but places it within a larger story where even the most acute suffering serves a good that transcends our immediate understanding.

Perhaps today you still find yourself in the pit. Perhaps the chains of past trauma seem too heavy to be broken. Perhaps the prison of negative interpretation of your story seems to have no way out.

But listen: you are not the one who has to rewrite your story through your own strength alone. You are not the one who has to transform the meaning of your scars through pure willpower.

There is a greater Narrator at work.

The same one who took Joseph's story and transformed it from a tragedy of abandonment into an epic of salvation. The same one who took the Cross – the supreme symbol of torture and shame – and transformed it into the definitive sign of redemption. The same one who takes the broken fragments of your life and inserts them into a stained glass window that, traversed by His light, reveals a beauty that no intact glass could ever manifest.

Today you are invited to do what Joseph did, what Paul discovered, what countless souls through the centuries have experienced: to surrender the narrative of your life to the One who can redeem every story.

Not by denying the pain, but by refusing to give it the final word. Not by erasing the scars, but by allowing them to speak a new language. Not by forgetting the trauma, but by placing it in a story of meaning that infinitely transcends it.

Your scars speak. But who will decide what they are saying?