The Scars We Can’t See

“Is that a port scar?”

Her question startled me out of the blue. We were standing in waist-deep water, watching our kids play in the pool, making small talk as women do. We’d swapped names, shared kids’ ages, and laughed as they jumped into the water together, making fast friends from strangers as children do.

But I didn’t think she and I were going that deep, this soon.

By instinct, my fingers flew up to the small line across my collarbone, still puffy where it was healing after surgery and so many infusions. I took a deep breath. Did I really want to tell a stranger my story?

“Yes, it is,” I answered, not knowing what to say. “How did you—”

Before I could finish, she traced a similar line near her neck, a paler scar. I hadn’t noticed it next to her brightly colored swimsuit, but our eyes can learn to see what we didn’t see before.

“I always notice them now,” she said. “Sorry — I didn’t mean to make you feel weird. I know it’s a personal question. Sometimes I just feel this connection with women who get it, you know?”

Next thing I knew, we were swapping stories: lumps and bumps, mammograms and mastectomies, chemo and radiation, so many surgeries, so many losses, so much suffering that most people don’t see. We laughed and teared up behind our sunglasses, watching our kids splash carefree in the sunshine while we shared how cancer had cannon-balled into our lives.

“But look at us!” she said, waving her arms between us, stretching toward our loud and laughing crew of kids. “We’re here. We get to be with them still. Doesn’t it just make you all the more grateful?”

I can’t remember her name or most of what we chatted about on that sunlit day. But I’ve never forgotten how it felt to be seen. To have a stranger notice something important about my life and invite me to bring it into the light, if I wanted.

I’ve never felt embarrassed about my scars — and after cancer, I have many. I know one friend prefers to cover up her port scar, wanting to forget entirely about how her port pumped months of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and bag after bag of IV fluids into her body. We have different ways of living with our scars, and we don’t always have to share them.

But we’re called to remember that we each bear them.

Human bodies are fragile and powerful, vulnerable and resilient. I taught my kids to marvel at this ability God gave our bodies. “Look at how you’re healing!” I’d say to them a day or two after placing a band-aid on a skinned knee or a playground cut. “God made our bodies to heal. It’s so amazing how God takes care of us that way.”

But as adults, we know that scars can stay. God gave the human body an incredible capacity for healing, but this doesn’t wipe away the physical and spiritual wounds that remain.

The scars from accidents or burns or cuts, literal or emotional.

The scars from surgeries we needed, to remove or repair injured parts of our bodies.

The scars from birth — or the medical treatments we hoped would bring babies, but didn’t.

The scars from sickness or disease or disability — and our doctors’ efforts to bring healing.

The scars from our cries of despair. The scars from dashed hopes.

The scars deep inside, from the ones who wounded us, in body or soul.

Some of our scars are visible. My younger kids will sometimes ask what happened to make the crisscrossed lines across my body, and I’ll share the story. But many scars cannot be seen. Which makes it even more important that we remember how we share them.

I love the resurrection stories in the Gospels, how vividly they describe Jesus’ resurrected body. He walked and talked and ate with His friends; He was no ghost. But even more powerfully — for those of us who are the walking wounded, which is all of us — He still bore the scars from His crucifixion.

What a remarkable gift of resurrection, that Jesus kept this visible reminder of what He had suffered. He did not show up on Easter morning with a super-human body, sparkling and smooth. Quite the opposite; He still bore the marks of his passion and death: the cut in his side, the nail holes in his hands and feet.

His wounds were the way His friends knew Him.

On a long-ago day in a bright blue pool, a scar made the way for a stranger to share a sliver of my suffering. The stories we offered to each other created kinship in the most unexpected places.

But no matter how we choose to live with our scars — to care for them in quiet or to hold them with a trusted confidant — we can move through the world with more tenderness and compassion when we remember that we have each known deep pain.

May we remember that to be human is to be scarred. Jesus knew this, too. But we can help each other bear our suffering. Because no part of us — body or soul — is hidden from our God who made and heals and loves us.