There are moments in life that mark you. They leave their scars on your heart, and every flashback you have of that moment tears away a tiny bit of that scar, threatening to rip it open again. I know you have these scars, and so do I.

I was riding in the passenger seat of an ambulance transporting my 6 week-old baby girl to a children’s hospital in downtown Memphis. On a beautiful spring morning my kids and I had been out in the backyard playing at the water table, washing toys for an upcoming garage sale when I heard a sickening noise - a thud followed by a hellish shriek. It was the shriek of an infant who had just gone crashing onto the concrete. When I picked her up, she had a bump the size of an egg on her tiny, newborn skull. It was blue and soft. The world went dark for a moment as I tried to comfort her and still keep my wits about me enough to get her help. In the emergency room they told us she had fractured her skull and would need to be closely monitored to make sure that there was no bleeding in her brain. The lack of control I had over the situation was stifling to me. I felt boxed in from every side, dizzy. But more than that, I felt so ashamed.

If people knew I had let this happen to my child, what would they think? Would they scoff and make snide remarks behind my back? Would they not trust me to be around their kids?  Would they look at me with those eyes - the eyes that pity you and make you feel small?

It was by grace and grace alone that my daughter came away from that accident unscathed. Not a day goes by that I don’t look at her and remember what could have been. And yet in those days, we told only a handful of our closest friends. In the name of “privacy”, we kept it to ourselves.

Fast forward 3 years - I was at a pool with my friends and all of our kids. Two weeks after taking swim lessons, my oldest and most cautious child begged me to swim without floaties.  I hesitantly agreed since half of the pool was shallow. The afternoon was going well, there was laughing and jumping and eating and fun. Until I heard 4 words that hit me like a gut punch...

“Blow your bubbles, Levi.”

With what I can only describe as a prompting from the Holy Spirit, I looked around for my Levi, who only moments earlier was at my side. I saw a little girl floating in a pool ring holding onto little hands sunken into the pool’s deep end. I ran to those little hands and pulled with all my strength as he came out of the water. His head rolled back lifelessly and his eyes bulged from his head. His lips were a shade of grayish blue that I will never forget. I set him on the edge of the pool, hit my fist against his chest, and screamed his name. Water burst from his mouth and he went into a panicked cry. He told me all about how he screamed for me under the water but I never came to him. He told me how he tried to kick and swim but he just got so tired that he had to stop. He pleaded with me, asking me why I didn’t save him when he screamed.

I cannot find the words to describe to you how my heart broke that day. I cannot accurately express the mixture of guilt and shame and regret that permeated every crevice of my being. I thought I had the worst day of my life 3 years earlier. I stood in disbelief that there could be something worse than that day. Yet there I was.

We were back at that same hospital 3 years later with a different child. I stayed up all night watching him, swearing I’d never take my eyes off of him again, swearing that he would never scream my name in vain again. Yet as I sat there in that hospital room I felt something different than the first time. I felt like I should tell everyone.

We sent messages out to everyone who loved us. We told the truth, as shameful as it was for me to admit. We told them all and we asked them to pray for us. I asked them to show me the love I could not show myself. I asked them to give me the grace I could not give myself and to let me borrow the faith that I could not muster on my own. It was terrible. It was difficult. It was beautiful. 

No one blamed me. No one criticized. No one turned their face away. No one looked down on me.  There was only love. There was only deep, deep friendship and kindness. I knew love like I never had before on the worst day of my life.

That’s what family does. That’s what the church does. We don’t take delight in each other’s failures, because they are not his or hers; they are ours. In the wake of defeat we don’t see an opening to take someone’s place; we see a place that we need to hold for our brother or sister. There was nothing you could have said to me on that day, or on the day 3 years before, that would have taken away my guilt. In fact, if someone had berated me and told me that I was a failure as a mom I would have simply hung my head and shook it in agreement. But love does not delight in evil. You cannot love someone and celebrate when they fall. You cannot love someone and wear an “I told you so” smirk while they are hurting.
That day, I let the worst of myself be known and I was loved anyways. I admitted the thing that could have buried me in shame, I brought it into the light.  And although it stung for a minute, the glory of that light healed it all. 

The more I tell this story, the more I share about how early and how often I messed up, the more love I receive. You see, we can take these parts of us - these experiences and choices that have scarred us and in our eyes marked us “unworthy” - and we can hide them away so no one can see them. We can play the part of perfection. But the secret things will always come to light. This is not punishment. This is not penance to pay for your mistakes.

This is grace.

Our flaws, our shortcomings, our mistakes, our addictions and habits and incompetencies -  truth about who we are - these things are not made to be secrets. These things were made to be known.  WE were made to be known. If you aren’t fully known you cannot be fully loved. “Love rejoices in the truth”. It rejoices in the truth that we are not alone in our imperfections. If we all hide them, we all feel like no one else has them. Bring to light all of your brokenness, and watch love put it all back together. When that scar from the past threatens to tear itself open, invite others to help you mend it. And maybe along the way you’ll stop believing the lie that the truth will cast you out, and you’ll accept, that in fact, the truth will set you free.

Kristi Rice