The Scar That Shows When I Smile

When I was 13, I had an unusual fainting episode and woke up with a gash under my right eye, just above my cheek, that required 10 stitches. That was also the summer I got braces—an awkward beginning to my teenage years.

We did everything we could to lessen the scar—my mom was so diligent to carefully apply vitamin E oil to my skin every night. But even now, decades later, the scar remains. Most people never notice it.

But I do.

Especially when I smile—my face crinkles asymmetrically just above my right cheek.

Isn’t that odd? A mark left by a deep wound is most visible in my moments of joy.

I think there’s something to that—how joy and pain can live side by side. How one can provoke the other. In the beauty of a lovely, ordinary day, grief can brush up against happiness and quietly reveal itself.

I recently read the phrase “grief doesn’t have a finish line” and I’ve been ruminating on that. When I lost my mom, I knew the first year would be the hardest. But I think, quietly, I had hoped the sadness would ease off quickly.

Truthfully, it hasn’t.

This summer has only amplified my grief: remembering dates and appointments and moments that would become our “lasts.”

In the middle of an ordinary, carefree summer day, I can catch the smell of Tyler Diva laundry detergent on the breeze and suddenly joy walks side by side with tears. That scent—distinctive and immediate—can turn my head faster than my husband’s cologne. It’s the detergent my mom switched to when she came home from her first hospital stay, less than 60 days before she passed.

This road is somewhat familiar to me. When I lost Rebekah and Rachel, tiny things would take my breath away, unbidden. I remember walking down the grocery store aisles and all I could see were ‘Twin’kies and ‘twin’ packs. Just the word ‘twin’ felt like a punch in the gut. Even carrying another baby, holding a healthy child—it didn’t erase the ache of grief.

Grief is never “over”—you just learn to live with it, like a scar.

Just like I learned to live with a scar that crinkles up in joy.

It gives me great comfort to think of the scars my Savior has, that I will see one day. Wounds He could have erased, but chose to keep.

In 1859, C.H. Spurgeon preached a sermon titled “The Wounds of Jesus”. It’s worth reading in its entirety if you can find the time. In it, he says:

“I wish to draw your attention to the simple fact, that our Lord Jesus Christ, when He rose again from the dead had in His body the marks of His passion. If He had pleased He could readily have removed them. [T]hese scars, these are the memorials of the fight, and these the trophies, too.”

Christ did not remove His wounds, He took them to Heaven with Him. Like Spurgeon says, they were trophies—proof that He was not defeated by death, but that He conquered death.

“Even the captain of our salvation must be made perfect through suffering; therefore, we who are guilty, we who are far from being perfect, must not wonder that we have to be wounded too,” Spurgeon continues. “[T]he wounds of Christ are to teach us that suffering is necessary.”

He could have erased every trace of His suffering, but He kept the marks. Marks that reveal the depth of His love for us, and the cost of a crucified life.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. — 1 Peter 4:12 & 13

Perhaps we should not hide our scars, or wish them away.

The scars of grief are not weakness. They are proof of love.

Scars are not failures. They are proof that you survived.

Time may fade the scar of grief. The edges may soften and the wound become less tender. But no—you will never be completely finished with grief.

And that’s okay.

Because He isn’t finished with you, either.

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