Internal Bleeding

There is a pain that is so potent and yet so personal that words fail to describe it.

It’s the circumstance whose description will never escape your lips.

You don’t talk about it, but it defines you; whether you run from it, attempt to cure it, or try to ignore it.

You’ve tried doctors, positive thinking, dieting. All of it has failed. Then you’ve tried isolating (no one understands, anyway), or feigned apathy, or turned to something, anything that would help you forget or at least dull the pain.

There is a pain that is so potent and yet so personal that words fail to describe it.

It’s the circumstance whose description will never escape your lips.

You don’t talk about it, but it defines you; whether you run from it, attempt to cure it, or try to ignore it.

You’ve tried doctors, positive thinking, dieting. All of it has failed. Then you’ve tried isolating (no one understands, anyway), or feigned apathy, or turned to something, anything that would help you forget or at least dull the pain.

You miss hope; the notion that one day…one day this pain will end. Hope is estranged from you, and its presence anywhere mocks you.

But then…"one day" becomes "right now":

Now a woman…had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years. She had endured a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet instead of getting better, she grew worse.
When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she kept saying, “If only I touch his clothes, I will be healed.”
At once the bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
Jesus knew at once that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing against you and you say, ‘Who touched me?’” But he looked around to see who had done it.
Then the woman, with fear and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

(I used the Mark 5:25-34 passage, but you can find the story in Matthew 9:20-22 and Luke 8:43-47)

This story reminds me to do two things:

1 – reach for Jesus
2 – be brave

This woman had been constantly "unclean" for years (Leviticus 15:19-30), leading a lonely and desperate existence. She should not have been in a crowd, and she certainly should not have been touching anyone, let alone Jesus. Her 12 years of constant shame kept her from even talking to Jesus. Instead, she stooped to grab the lowest part of His cloak in hopes (hope returns!) of being healed.

The woman was no stranger to disappointment after years of doctors’ promises that left her bankrupt and even sicker. But there was something different about Jesus. She must have marveled in the wake of all the healed people He left behind (and He healed for free!).

She saw the hope for healing, and even though it was so far away for so long, with Jesus the possibility was finally within arm’s reach.

Today, we still have internal bleeding. For some of us, there are emotional gashes in our hearts from past pain that make us feel perpetually unclean. And for others of us, the hurt is physical: we wonder of our worth as women because of the aftermath of beating cancer, but losing a breast, or a uterus, or because of an inability to carry a baby in our wombs. We feel like less-than-women. We feel like outcasts.

But how does Jesus respond to this woman defined by her issue of blood? He calls her out specifically. While the disciples respond with sarcasm, she responds with fear and trembling – and honesty. Jesus acknowledges her and calls her by a different name: daughter. She is one of His own. Her identity is changed. She is commended by the Son of God for her faith.

For the first time, she is defined by Jesus, not by her disease.

Jesus does not change. He is the same compassionate Savior today. He is a Restorer. And this story encourages me to understand that at the times where I feel like He feels miles away and I feel lonely and hopeless, that perhaps I need to be brave and reach for Him in honest prayer. Even in the midst of my fear and shame.

Other people may fail me. Other people may take advantage, or mock, or be completely apathetic. I may fail myself. Not Jesus. He will not despise us when we reach out for Him.

He calls us daughters.