I was 21, unmarried, and pregnant the day I sat across from my pastor, asking for help. My voice was trembling, my future uncertain. He listened, nodded, and then handed me a stack of articles on why premarital sex is wrong. That was it. No prayers. No tears. No hand on my shoulder or promise to walk with me. Just shame—neatly stapled and doctrinally justified.
That encounter would become one of my earliest scars in the church. It would also become a turning point in my understanding of grace.
Reading Aimee Byrd’s The Hope in Our Scars felt like walking back into that moment—but this time with someone sitting beside me, bearing witness. Byrd writes as one who has lived the wounds of spiritual neglect, misogyny, and ecclesial betrayal. She doesn’t just write about scars—she writes from them. And what she offers is not a roadmap out of pain, but a lantern to walk through it.
“The Hope in Our Scars will direct us to see Christ among the chaos,” Byrd writes. For her, this chaos is personal and ecclesial—rooted in betrayal by the very institution that proclaims good news. Her entry point is the poetic and often-misunderstood Song of Songs, reframing it not as an erotic outlier but as a vision of covenantal love that “leaps over the mountains” of our woundedness to find us.
This is not a book that asks us to look away from pain. It invites us to look directly into it—and still see beauty.
Byrd’s most piercing insights come when she names what so many of us have known but couldn’t articulate: spiritual abuse often hides behind theological language. “The worst part of the boatloads [of shame],” she writes, “isn’t the verbal assault. The worst part is the lack of empathetic witness and accountability from those who can do something about it”. Abuse flourishes in silence. In complicity. In pulpits and pews that prioritize reputation over repentance.
As a pastor, I found myself nodding, wincing, remembering. I’ve pastored people who were spiritually gaslit, women told their voices were too loud or their questions too disruptive, and men shamed for mental illness rather than shepherded with tenderness. I’ve seen how shame is not just a feeling—it’s a system. And as Byrd insists, “We need partners in affliction, people who will bear witness to where we are and what we have experienced and still stay in the room with us”.
Byrd offers more than critique—she offers care. Drawing from trauma research, she introduces readers to the basics of trauma-informed ministry. It’s not a passing trend—it’s gospel work, Byrn argues. She echoes therapist Wade Mullen by defining spiritual abuse as what happens when “someone uses their power to do or take from another what is not rightfully theirs”. Through this definition, Byrd reminds us that trauma isn’t just what happens to us—it’s what we carry alone in the absence of empathetic witness. Her call is clear: we must learn to see, name, and stay.
But Byrd doesn’t leave us in the ache. She points to a deeper truth: our scars are not signs of failure—they are signs of healing. “To show his disciples he was real and alive,” she writes, “the first thing Jesus does… is reveal his scars”. The Savior doesn’t hide what hurt him. He bears it as testimony. So must we.
This is where Byrd’s poetic vision soars. She doesn’t center pain as the final word; she centers Christ–the hope is not in the wound, but in the One who bears it with us. Joy, she says, is what allows us to despise shame. “What does it mean that Jesus despised the shame? Don’t you see? It’s the joy”.
One of Byrd’s great gifts in this book is how she weds theology to embodiment. Discipleship, for her, isn’t merely intellectual—it’s sensory, storied, communal. The sacraments matter. Beauty matters. Our bodies and stories matter. “Church should be a safe place to ask hard questions… offering communion without shame”. I couldn’t agree more. I only wish she had gone deeper here. While Byrd names the harm done to her in reformed spaces and eventually leaves her Presbyterian denomination, there is a missed opportunity to explore what ecclesial repair and reimagined authority structures might look like.
The best preaching advice I ever received came from Nadia Bolz-Weber, who urges pastors to “preach from your scars, not your wounds.” Scars embody hope. Some say that “it gets better,” but preaching from fresh wounds risks turning the pulpit into a place for personal processing—or worse, inflicting pain on others. At times, Byrd appears to write from a place of active hurt, which perhaps limits her ability to stay curious about how the Spirit might be at work even in those who caused her harm. I’d love to hear her voice again after more time and healing have passed.
Still, Byrd’s longing for a church worth fighting for pulses on every page. Her critiques do not come from bitterness, but from bruised love. She still believes. And because she believes, she grieves. “The church is suffering under disillusionment, disappointment, weariness, and corruption. Why continue to bother with it?” she asks. Her answer: “Because God has already inaugurated us into his kingdom that is not of this world”.
Yes, there are foxes in the vineyard. But there are also gardeners still tending the soil. There are still lovers who leap mountains. Beauty is still rising from ashes, and communities are forming not in perfection, but in presence.
My own testimony is still unfolding. But I know this: the scars I once tried to hide have become the very marks that teach me how to stay with others in their pain. My scars have trained me in the art of lament, and they’ve made me a better pastor.
And like Byrd, I’ve learned that hope is not always triumphant. Sometimes it is quiet. Sometimes it is scarred. But it is alive.
This book is for anyone who has sat across from a pastor and received shame instead of grace. It’s for those who’ve walked away from church but still long for the Bride. It’s for the wounded who want to believe again, not in fairy tales, but in the gritty beauty of resurrection that includes the cross.
Read this book if you need language for your pain. Read it if you need a partner in affliction. Read it if you’re still here, still believing, still becoming radiant—even with your scars.
