10/11/2025
Want a sneak peek at my first book, Scarred Hands, Search and Rescue for Adults Abused as Children! before it shows up on Amazon in November? Here's:
A Parable of Scarred Hands
Life’s river flows through easy shallows and cold, deep places. The current can run smooth or over rapids. The water rolls under rainy and sunny days. The current boils through crags and meanders across inviting meadows.
]Underneath even a tranquil surface can lie cold, dark, and unpredictable danger. Storm winds roar in. The waves crash and glare with destructive eyes that threaten to pull us down into dizzying black depths and pain.
We all navigate this river to its end.
Every one of us is born powerless, swept along in the river’s current. Most people know we all need help to stay afloat, whether we climb onto safe boulders in the waters, grab an overhanging branch, or accept a steady hand to negotiate slick river-bottom stones. We have good days on the water. Helpers shield many with soothing strength—their eyes and voices calm and healing. Some of us accept their assistance to navigate the river, especially its stalking, grasping rapids.
Others risk facing it alone as adults, unaware of possible consequences. We need help long after infancy, though, whether it is available to us or not.
Child abuse victims often appear to swim better than anyone in the river. We perform because we have learned from experience how to avoid control by monsters. The abuser’s character assassination and the shame we feel drive us to prove we are not who we have been made out to be, but the best of the best. We swim like crazy because we intend to control our lives. At times, we seem unshakable. Often, the control we seek works itself out in perfectionism.
At other times we gasp and scream in panic at the smallest ripple, gulp water, and sink in despair. A smell, a sound, a certain phrase, a tone, or a touch triggers us. We fly into a rage to fight others for perceived survival, or we drown in dark discouragement or depression and consider quitting our struggle for the surface. Times of apparent superhuman strength coupled with times of child-like frailty evidence a history of pain in the cold, shadowy river. Under stress, we attempt to blend into the environment, unseen and unmolestable.
But downstream, beyond the bend of self-reliance, waits a Man with scarred hands. This God/man controls every part of the river, and he desires with his whole being to help all people know him and swim masterfully. He means to empower every person to travel effectively in safety through even the roughest river waters, especially we who drag cinderblocks of abuse.
About two thousand years ago, he swam into the river with us. For a little over three decades, he experienced our life to show us who he is and welcome us to him. He brought no life preserver—needed none. Unlike us, he saw through deception and intimidation. He anticipated his complete humiliation and abuse, the most despicable of deaths. Purposefully, he swam into this pain for us and allowed the ruthless river to swallow him.
Because he loves us, the river drowned him.
Then he returned.
When the waters trouble us and nothing is clear, the bare shadow of his scarred hand appears through the stifling froth and mist. He is here. He stretches his hand to you, strains, his plan to grasp your groping hand and lift you to a safe sandbar. He did not die to buy everyone tickets to somewhere we could take our ease on the banks of the river. He came back to provide a way to do more than merely survive in the river.
He did not return alone. He brought others with scarred hands—men and women who witnessed his sacrifice, denied him, retreated, then were drawn back, followed him, and committed our broken, lonely lives to him. The scars prove we are healing. We come with another Helper to assist fellow swimmers out of choking currents. These hands whose scars you recognize connect you to Him and support you as you learn to swim in your pools and rapids.
Watch for the scarred hands.
We may wait next to you for the bus. We may sit next to you in a waiting room. We may go to your church. We may attend the same union local you do. Jesus waits and reaches out for you in each one of his believers. What identifies us as his reaching hand is our other hand gripping his as we reach toward you. And our transparency. We have stopped hiding.
Over time you will find one of your own scarred hands reaches forward for help while the other reaches behind you to help someone else.
Inside your heart you may cry, “I’m not sure I can trust these hands reaching toward me. Many appear doubled up, or bear phony gifts, or point condemning fingers. I’ve had enough of their abuse.” There are those who call themselves believers but show themselves, not scarred hands at all, but treacherous swirls that threaten to drag you deeper into the lonely river. But their smooth, deceptive hands are not the only ones to reach through the foam.
To avoid the swirls, search for hands with scars. You will spot a nail hole in one, a cigarette burn in another. Those hands reach under the water for you when you are sinking, cut themselves on treacherous rocks, and clasp your arm. They offer support yet ask nothing for themselves. They know he provides every need and keeps you both safe in the currents.
Reach out. Grasp a scarred hand—His, or if you need time to consider his claims, ours. Then one day, maybe both. Grasping his scarred hand is the most crucial decision of your life.
