Healing Virtues

English: Christ healing a bleeding woman Photo from Catacombes of Rome Source:    http://campus.belmont.edu/honors/CatPix/womanblood.jpg Over 1500 years old 2d art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over a year ago, I was sitting in my counselors office, weeping. I was telling her that I wanted to be better, that I needed healing.

I compared my struggle with the woman mentioned in the gospel of Mark that had a problem with hemorrhaging. I told her that if I could just reach Jesus, I knew that I could find healing. She looked at me and asked “Do you know what she did once she got there?” Ummm… She was healed, duh? She pointed out a line that is usually over looked. “She told him the whole truth.”

Mark 5:25-34

²⁵ And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. ²⁶ She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. ²⁷ When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸ because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” ²⁹ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

³⁰ At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

³¹ “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

³² But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. ³³ Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. ³⁴ He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” [1]

OK, so what does this mean? I graduated with a degree in theatre arts, and in acting you of course learn how to portray a character but you first learn about truthfulness. How do you make a character true to you? You add substitutions for circumstances, you draw parallels from your own life. You don’t “act” but you let the realness of the situation bleed through your veins. You do not withhold anything.

This woman spoken about in the gospel of Mark was desperate. She had exhausted her resources. Her “issue of blood” would probably be called menorrhagia today. That’s just a big fancy word for prolonged menstrual bleeding, 12 years in her case. It can be caused by about 100 different things from a hormonal imbalance to fibroids, from dysfunctional parts to endometriosis, my arch nemesis.

Not only was the poor woman probably in constant discomfort, completely broke from suffering many things from the doctors, she would have been considered “unclean” according to Mosaic Law [2]. This means that no one could touch her and remain clean. She was not quite as bad off as the lepers of the time, but she would have had to endure bitter loneliness. She could not share a bed or even a chair with any other person. She could not even go to the temple to worship properly. And if she was at one time married, he probably kicked her to the curve because she was constantly unclean and unable to perform her wifely and motherly duties, completely awful I know.

When she touched Jesus, he felt power leave his body, he knew there was something different. People were flocking to him, but it was her minimal clutch at the tip of his robe that caused him to stop.

When she had stopped Jesus, she came forward in fear and was trembling. I can imagine her being caught like a kid with her hand in the cookie jar, immediately spouting out reasons as to why she had touched him. I can hear her saying all of the things she had suffered physically, emotionally, and spiritually all with tears streaming down her cheeks.

She was hopeless, but he was her hope. Not only did she move Jesus, his healing moved through her. She felt the change in her body. She was healed.

This story means so much to me on different levels. Truthfulness is something I have to work at. Not that I am a pathological liar, I was just bred to hide my feelings. If I was hurt, I was NOT. I was fine. I was not allowed to feel sad because that’s not the Christian way to deal with things, you must always appear joyful even when your heart is shattered into a million pieces. These are all lies that I had learned from parents and some other older, wiser influences in my life.

Now that I realize that you cannot heal without being truthful, I strive to find truth in different roles that arise in my life. When I was told that I probably could not bear children, I was devastated. I was heartbroken for about a week, then I took it to God, told him how I felt.

I determined in my mind that I wanted to move his heart. I wanted him to feel his healing virtue release into me.

Before I conceived my child, I went on a fast for healing. I fasted for about two weeks. Then about two weeks later, I found out that I was pregnant.

I had decided that whether I could conceive or not that I would not let my faith falter. I would still love God.

I know many women war with infertility, they have to endure rounds and rounds of IVF, they have to suffer many things from different doctors. I know some women beg God for children and are never able to conceive. My hope is to not come across as someone who seems insensitive to this or as someone who seems to lack compassion. I just want to share my journey and hope that you can find some encouragement along the way.

Have you had a similar experience?

[1] Mark 5:25-34 NIV

[2] Leviticus 15:19-30