When I was 12 years old, I went on a trip to Arizona with my mom and dad and some of my dad’s side of the family. I remember we went on a hike and we had made it to the top, had lunch together and my uncle had already started back down the mountain. I was full of energy and so I asked my mom if I could catch up to my uncle and she said I could, so I started running down the mountain trail. If you have ever run down a mountain trail, then you know how exhilarating it is, but it also feels a little reckless and you can tell when you reach a point that you won’t be able to stop your momentum very easily. I reached that point and as I was bounding down the mountain I suddenly tripped over a rock. I fell to the ground really hard and my knee scraped a rock really badly. I had not caught up to my uncle and so I was completely alone. For a minute I felt like I was in the story of the good Samaritan as I watched people pass by me, but luckily, a stranger offered me some water to clean myself up with. I couldn’t walk very well because of my injury so I waited for my mom to come down the mountain. This was not that much of a traumatic experience, but I do still have a scar the size of a quarter on my right knee.

Fast forward to 2022 and I have a dream that I wake up to a phone call from a dermatologist telling me that I am late for my appointment to remove my knee scars. I felt so stupid for sleeping through it and they told me that they would still have to charge me $500 for the missed appointment. I asked them if insurance would cover it and they said they would cover $400 of it, but that I would have to cover the $100 besides that. I asked if I could still come in for the rest of the hour of my appointment and they could look at the moles that I have and make sure they are not cancerous instead of doing the scar removal. I think they must have agreed because I woke up almost in a panic to get to my appointment. At first I just laughed at this dream because in real life there never was any appointment set up, and it would be a pretty silly thing to do to get a childhood scar on my knee removed. Then I thought about it more and realized that this dream is a pretty accurate representation of how I sometimes view the atonement of Jesus Christ. I sometimes get very critical of my past self because of mistakes that I made. Those mistakes, in a lot of ways, are like the scar on my knee. I was just running too fast and I tripped. Is now, in 2022, finally the time when God will demand that I be perfect and get my childhood scars removed? Are those types of scars really a bad thing? I learned very quickly that I should not sprint down a mountain, especially alone. If I learned something from falling then I am happy to have that scar. Jesus has scars. I think He kept them, at least partially, to make us feel better when we acquire scars in mortality. Christ’s great aim is not to somehow delete our past, especially the experiences we learn from. His goal is to search out the cancerous spots inside of us. The process of becoming perfect is not a cosmetic procedure to lighten our scars, it is a surgery to remove the cancer of pride and rebellion. Scars are healed wounds and they will not suddenly kill us because they are not alive the way that a cancer is alive. Falling down a mountain is not an act of rebellion, it is an accident and a learning experience. Satan tries to convince you that you missed your appointment to be perfect so you might as well not go, not try, do nothing, and fixate on your scars forever. God’s plan to identify cancerous spots should have been the reason for the appointment in the first place. Being perfect from the beginning was never God’s plan for us, He wants us to grow grace for grace. He did not want us to remain innocent and never get any scars. In the grand scheme of things, it is not the scars that God is concerned about, it’s the cancer. Christ has us make appointments with Him to identify and remove cancer, not scars. “God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also”(Alma 60:23). God works from the inside out, and Satan’s lie is that we are supposed to work from the outside in. Satan will have you focus so much on your scars that you are in despair and can’t see any deeper than the surface. God wants us to forgive ourselves for the scars and seek His help for identifying the areas where cancer is growing. Sometimes we judge people because of the scars they have, but we don’t see that their body is actually extremely healthy. With others it can seem like they have perfect scar-less skin, yet on the inside they are dying of cancer. God can heal both, but He is far more concerned about the people who perceive themselves as healthy and are not.

The last thing I want to draw from this dream has to do with the cost of the procedure. Sometimes we think that the atonement of Jesus Christ will only cover a fraction of the cost of our mistakes. In my dream, insurance would only cover four fifths of the cost. Some people think they have to pay for three fifths or even the whole cost of the procedure. That is not how insurance with Jesus works. With Christ, He has already paid for and covered the whole procedure, all we need to do is sign up. If you missed the appointment, He will cover the fees for that too. I said earlier that Jesus has scars too, and I think it is important to remember that he has your scars specifically. He knows your struggles and he knows your shortcomings and He knows your rebellions. Even still, He wants to cover all of it because He loves you and has already paid the price for you to become perfect. Go to Him and find out how to remove and cure your cancer, He will handle the scars. One day I know that I will be resurrected and the scar on my knee that I got from running down a mountain too fast at 12 years old will be gone. Along with our scars being gone, so will every mistake and shortcoming, all because our loving and perfect Savior was willing to pay the price.