Healed and a Little Broken
Every time my knee hurts, I have the same thought.
You should’ve kept up with physical therapy, Maggie.
I’ve been saying that to myself for years.
When I was twelve, my left kneecap started dislocating.
Not because I injured it.
As I grew, my femur angled inward just enough that it pulled my kneecap out of place. We tried everything before surgery—physical therapy, braces, tape, strengthening exercises—but eventually one dislocation tore a tendon, and surgery became unavoidable.
A few weeks after that surgery, while my left leg was still locked in a brace, I bent down to pick something up.
As I stood back up…
My right kneecap dislocated for the first time.
Apparently my knees like symmetry.
Ten years later, after another round of braces, therapy, and wishful thinking, I had surgery on that knee too.
I was a model patient at physical therapy.
At home?
Not so much.
The therapist gave me exercises to do every day.
I nodded enthusiastically.
Then…
I mostly didn’t do them.
Eventually my appointments ended.
Life moved on.
And for the most part…
So did I.
Today, my knees are good.
Not perfect.
Good.
They don’t randomly dislocate anymore.
I don’t live wondering if today’s the day I’m going to collapse walking across a parking lot.
The surgeries did exactly what they were supposed to do.
But they didn’t make my knees brand new.
I can’t fully straighten either leg.
No one else notices.
I do.
I have arthritis now.
They crack loudly enough that I’m convinced the entire room can hear them, even though everyone insists they can’t.
A few years ago I stopped running because my knees were asking for a different kind of care than they used to.
My knees are healed…
And they’re a little broken.
For a long time, I thought those two things couldn’t both be true.
I thought healing meant returning to the person—or the body—I was before.
Now I don’t think that’s what healing usually looks like.
Healing often looks like learning how to live well with scars.
I think about that every time my knees ache.
I don’t regret the surgeries.
They gave me my life back.
But I do wonder what might have been different if I had stayed faithful to the small, ordinary work that came afterward.
The stretches.
The strengthening.
The exercises that didn’t feel important until years later.
It makes me think about the way God heals us.
Not because I think emotional healing is as simple as “just do your homework.”
It’s not.
Some wounds take years.
Some we carry for a lifetime.
But I’ve learned that healing is rarely a single moment.
It’s a relationship.
It’s returning.
Again.
And again.
It’s practicing forgiveness after we’ve been forgiven.
Choosing honesty after we’ve discovered the truth.
Learning new patterns after old ones no longer serve us.
It’s slow.
It’s repetitive.
Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening at all.
Until one day you realize…
You aren’t the person you used to be.
Not because your scars disappeared.
Because you’ve grown around them.
I used to think scars meant something had gone wrong.
Now I think they tell the story of what has been healed.
They remind us that something hurt.
That something mattered.
That someone stayed long enough to help put us back together.
I don’t think God is trying to make us into people who have never been wounded.
I think He’s making us into people who can carry our wounds differently.
People who can walk, even if we limp a little.
People who know what pain feels like and therefore recognize it in someone else.
People whose compassion is deeper because they’ve needed it themselves.
My knees still remind me of the surgeries.
Some mornings they ache.
Some days they complain when I climb stairs.
Every now and then they whisper,
“You probably should’ve kept up with physical therapy.”
They’re probably right.
But they also remind me of something else.
Healing doesn’t always mean becoming who you were before.
Sometimes it means becoming someone stronger, wiser, and gentler because of what you’ve survived.
Maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s what healing was always meant to look like.
