I’ve always been active and love to move my body. I still have fond memories of when I was teeny tiny patiently waiting my turn with excitement to try some new ballet moves across wood floors in front of a wall of mirrors.
At my first piano recital I was so nervous to perform in front of everyone I sat shaking in my seat with jitters. After I pounded out a messy version of “row row row your boat” (which is still the only song I can play on the piano) I sighed a massive sigh of relief and boldly skipped back to my seat in the pew at the church where we performed. The crowd laughed and applauded, not for my song but for my skipping after.
Even then, I knew how to connect my nervous system to my body and skip my way out of anxiety.
The birth of my son wasn’t the first time I felt like my body had failed me. But in therapy I did an exercise where I thought of the “first” “worst” and “most recent” time I experienced an emotion. As far as a failing body goes, birth definitely felt like the “worst.”
I remember the shaky uncertainty I felt around early contractions vividly. I remember finally telling my husband, I think this is really happening, when I couldn’t deny it any longer. As I entered my first experience of labor I remember the terrible pain I felt that I couldn’t explain and all the birth books in the world couldn’t have prepared me for. Now I know it wasn’t pain from contractions but that pain was what sent me into an emergency surgery and saved my life and my sons.
For months, I hated my body for that. But I’ve learned to start to love it again since then.
At first, I felt like my body failed me. It didn’t birth my baby in the way I hoped it would. But it endured over thirty six hours of labor, much of it without pain meds, and some of it with pain meds that didn’t work. It hurt—but it didn’t hurt because it was trying to harm me. It hurt because it was trying to speak to me.
At the end of the day no doctor, no midwife, no nurse, no doula, no one in the room could tell me what was going on. But my body spoke. We finally all had to listen and my son’s life was saved.
In the months after surgery I wrestled with the moments in birth where we prayed something would change and it didn’t. I was frustrated with my body. Why hadn’t it just done what I wanted when I wanted it to?
In postpartum I found comfort in motion. Walking around my neighborhood became a daily ritual. EMDR, the type of therapy I did a lot of, was actually discovered on a walk. The way our brain responds to back and forth motion and movement is fascinating and heals us. I think God designed it like this on purpose.
Jesus did a lot of incredible things on earth. But he didn’t fly. He walked.
I like that about him. I like how after his resurrection he shows up and walks the road to Emmaus with his disciples and they just think he’s some average guy until he's like, “Surprise! It’s me.” He doesn’t do a wild miracle to prove it, he just goes for a walk.
After my surgery I didn’t like looking at my scar. Once it was more tolerable to look at, I started to think about Jesus’ scars. When he’s resurrected, he comes back and he has a resurrected body. And that body…has scars.
When Thomas tells everyone he has to see Jesus for himself to believe it, Jesus shows up and invites Thomas to touch his scars on his hands and his sides. I have googled around and can’t find any good resources on this (if you know of one, please send it my way!) but I find it fascinating that Jesus’ resurrected body includes his scars.
My experience post trauma in the church has often been “God is good and your pain will be gone one day.” I long for heaven and for the new body God promises us but this passage in the Bible has captivated me.
Why did Jesus come back with his scars intact? Was it just proof for the doubters or was there something else about keeping those scars?
As someone who has taken too many literature classes and believes the Bible to be both the Word of God and an incredible literary work I can’t set this thought aside and think it’s just a coincidence. I can hear literature professors in my ear about it and could likely crank out a ten page paper on it with the help of some late night coffee like I did in my college days.
At first, I would long for heaven post birth trauma and think about the perfect body I would hopefully receive. Now a part of me hopes I get to keep this scar. There is something about Jesus’ resurrected body having scars that I just can’t get over. This image of a God with scars captivates my mind and attention because it is the perfect picture of a God who cares deeply about our pain.
All of us live in fallen bodies whether we’ve faced it yet or not. The little wrinkles forming on my face seem to shape shift in the mirror and remind me of this fact daily as I approach thirty. Most of us know what it’s like to have the ache of a back pain or the experience of being stuck in bed with a sickness. Some of us fight chronic illness, live with disabilities or have our own marks of ways our bodies are stuck in a world impacted by the fall. We have no power to change these things.
But Jesus did. Jesus could have easily erased his scars.
He could have seen them as reminders of betrayal and death. Instead, I’m starting to think he saw them as proof of love and sacrifice. I wonder if his invitation to Thomas wasn’t just one of let me prove to you it’s me—the God who died for sin but maybe it’s let me prove to you it’s me—the God who is forever willingly marked by his love for you, Thomas. The God who has seen, experienced, overcame and embodied your pain. Or you his love for you, reader.
I’ve tucked this picture of Jesus in my mind instead of a glowing iridescent version. I like the Jesus who knows pain, has scars, and chose not to dismiss or erase them but left marks on his body like a love note.
“It hurt because it was trying to speak to me.” I love this line.