Parenthood: There Will Be Scars

Months ago, I stumbled upon what I thought was an epiphany: silicone scar strips…which promised, with 4.5 stars on Amazon, to fade stretch marks, people.

My heart lifted. My first child ballooned my belly like a watermelon, complete with stripes. When another mother asked to glimpse my stretch marks after I mentioned their severity, she gasped aloud with some equivalent of Good golly. 

Y’all, four kids later, my stomach is still not what one would call attractive.

I thought, Who would’ve thought they’d develop a technology to fade scars? To fade this trail of where my body has been?

So I handed over the $20 and slapped on the strips, vigilantly wearing them for admittedly only half the recommended three months. (Yet conveniently past any return date.) It’s super-cute to one’s spouse, I will add, to cover your body in what look like giant bandaids, particularly as the sticky edges start to curl up and attract fuzz.

A handful of my stretch marks faded to match the silver of the rest. But mostly?

Mostly this was a gimmick, fed by my longing for my former smooth, non-corrugated skin.

Scars: “You’re asking the right question”

After my oldest was born, I stood in my mother’s kitchen talking with my sister, who was at that time still childless. We discussed things that didn’t work quite as before since I’d had a baby. There were more than one. That conversation was even before a C-section scar frowned beneath my abdomen.

Let’s just say I lack some physical functionality, some beauty, some parts that will never bounce back to their taut little selves.

(And that’s just the physical side of having kids.)

My sister asked, her face a mixture of horror and disbelief, “Why would you do that to your body?”

She was asking the right question.

But wait! There’s more

My oldest is now 16. I actually looked forward to all that teenagers have to offer–the complex thought patterns and conversations and identity development and sharing all the movies and books I’ve loved. Part of me cherishes this season.

And part of me feels so ragged, friends.

My soon-to-be-released book, Permanent Markers (c’mon, October 5!), appeared on pre-order on Amazon this week (yes! For the second time!). Most of me exults!

Yet my heart is so world-weary from the greatest and most fearsome journey of my life. (That would be parenting.) The realities of raising children in this season threaten to bring me low. They cut deeply and leave marks on my heart.

(If I lift up the tail of my shirt right here, I have a story.)

Chapters of my parenting double my soul over in pain and loss. Sometimes these moments are nothing short of sacred, birthing God’s life into my family via pain.

But with many of my parenting questions, I’m still just trusting in God’s long game. I’m waiting on him. I believe he gives more than he takes; that he searches diligently for my kids when they wander (Luke 15); that for his own honor (not mine), he does “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).

Lord, we pray we never find ourselves without hope, without a glimpse of the empty tomb each time we happen upon a cross. Help us begin our daily journey expecting both crosses and empty tombs and rejoicing when we encounter either because we know you are with us.

– Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals 

Some of you, like me, tread through dark days of parenting right now. You understand how people could arrive at old age a little hunched and lined, wizened and shrunken–if not physically, on the inside.

Even if you’ve been working hard to do it in all the right ways, doing the right thing in parenting can feel as if your insides are being pushed outside your body.

(Wait. That’s happened once before…)

What My Scars Will Tell You

But here is what I know.

Having my old body, my old self back could never be worth the trade. (It wasn’t that spectacular in comparison anyway.) My scars mark where God has led me into love.

In a world that prizes loveliness and comfort, let us strategically choose moments of un-loveliness and pain.

But more than that, when we choose God’s will, we follow a God with scars.

One of my favorite verses has been this one:

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.

Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me. (Isaiah 49:15-16)

My name was engraved with spikes on those palms that hold the world in his hands.

Even after Jesus rose from the dead, he didn’t lose the scars (see John 20:27). And in Revelation, we know Jesus appears as “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (5:6).

If you asked him, he could tell you a story of a good King, betrayed and disbelieved, of a Son given as ransom for many. Of blood spattering, and neatly folded linen.

Put your finger here. See my hands.

In parenthood, we invite scars because of the Savior we follow and the way he loved.

Mark my words: Parenting will not leave you the same. In loving, there will be pain.

But in eternity, I doubt your scars will mask much, if any, regret.