A while ago I wrote a post that likened mistakes to scars. I recently listened to a fireside given from Sister Wendy Nelson and Sheri Dew titled “The Savior Heals Without a Scar”. While I listened to this, I felt that, in my post titled “Scars”, I had not done justice to the power of the Savior’s healing power. I don’t know if it is even possible to do so, but I made a mistake by not saying that the Savior can, in fact, heal our scars. I was taught this in an extremely personal way in the last few weeks. 

I have decided to serve a full time mission and I have been called to serve in the Arizona Tempe mission. I will likely discuss this decision further in another post. Putting in my mission papers was a relatively easy task, except that in one of my worthiness interviews it felt like I had to dig up every old memory of sins and transgressions and discuss them in detail for a solid thirty minutes. I had passed the interview, but I left his office convinced that every mistake I had made was so much worse than I had ever thought. It felt like every scar was cut open again. I know this was not the intention of my leader. I was not and am not bitter and I sustain him 100% in his calling. The next few days felt awful. All I could think about at work, at home, and in the car was how stupid I had been to make those mistakes. Speaking in the metaphor from the first post I made on this topic, it was as if I had suddenly been made aware that the gash I got in my knee as a child was actually so much deeper than I had thought. This made more sense of why it took so long for it to heal. I knew that I was forgiven of these mistakes and that the scar had healed. Yet, I was still left with these memories weighing heavy on my thoughts. I had a friend that told me of how he was able to forget his mistakes and that he genuinely could not recall them without significant effort. I thought about Alma in Alma 36 describing how he could not remember his sins anymore. Frankly, I was a bit jealous. Why could I still vividly remember every mistake but they couldn’t? I didn’t take this further until I read a few scriptures that prompted me to action. In Doctrine and Covenants 58:42 it says, “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.” And in Isaiah 43:25 it says, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” And in Ezekiel 18:21-23 it says, “But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?” Ultimately, what I realized from these verses is that if I want to be like the Lord, then I need to forget my mistakes too. In the previously mentioned talk, Sister Nelson likens change to turning a corner. When you turn a corner you have to keep your eyes ahead and after you turn, you will no longer be able to see what was behind you before you turned. Similarly, Alma said that after he changed, he “could remember [his] pains no more; yea, [he] was harrowed up by the memory of [his] sins no more” (Alma 36:19). 

The problem is that it is very difficult for the human brain to purposely forget something. I often find that if I am told to specifically not remember something, I am very likely to remember it. Even if scars aren’t a cancer that is going to grow, sometimes they can bother us when they are in a spot that everyone can see or while they still have extra sensitivity when bumped or injured. They can poke out and remind us of our mistakes. Well, after my mission interview it felt like I had been picking at my scars or even that they had reopened. I knew I wanted to forget but I didn’t know how, so I decided to bring it to the Lord. I offered a very short prayer just before bed that was met with an almost tangible weight being lifted off of my shoulders. It was so sudden that I stopped speaking. Before I had even said amen, I genuinely could not recall the things that had been weighing on my mind. It has been weeks since and I still haven’t been able to recall any of it. It felt like the Lord was just waiting for me to ask. 

Sister Nelson discussed in the fireside about her experience with face reconstruction surgery after taking a bad fall on a sidewalk. After a prayer offered by Sherri Dew, Sister Nelson was free of pain and free of fear and she was able to fly home to Salt Lake, receive the surgery, and, after a year, her face had healed completely without a scar. I feel like this is what the Savior did for me. Not only did he forgive and forget my mistakes, He allowed me to forget them too, or in other words, He fixed the scar too. Sister Nelson does not look in the mirror and see the huge gash she got from the sidewalk, she doesn’t see a scar that reminds her of her fall, she is entirely healed and able to forget the wound. That is how the Savior heals. Not only does He remove and cure cancers, He also heals the bumps, bruises, and scars we get from living a mortal life. We all can be like Alma, who went from, “I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell”, to “I could remember my pains no more… and oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold” (Alma 36:13,19-20). I bear my testimony that the Lord has healed me and that He can heal your wounds without scars too. 

The fireside is not on YouTube, but it is on the Deseret Bookshelf library. 

https://deseretbook.com/p/savior-heals-without-scar-sheri-l-dew-123