Thursday on adversity

"I don't know how you can stand to look," Marce said one night as she slowly took off her shirt. "I wasn't always this hideous." 

"You're never hideous," I said. Still I couldn't deny that she'd been scarred from all her years on this earth. There was that faint line on her right cheek, a  thicker one on her left, the pockmarks on her arms, and the crisscrossed tapestry of her back. How could she endure so much? 

Yet she still smiled. "Maybe not hideous to you." 

"Never," I said. Seeing the light in her eyes was worth it all.