#ThinkStrongThursday - The Hard of Healing

 "A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition. Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?” His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”"  Mark 5:25-34

    Oh, friend - I get it.  I TOTALLY understand how hard healing is.  Physical healing - especially after an injury or surgery can flat out leaving you feeling re-injured, to say the least.  Pursuing the peace of financial healing can leave you emotionally exhausted and wondering if the light at the end of the tunnel is a train.  

    And emotional and spiritual healing? Wow! Where do  I start? I truly believe that is the hardest healing journey of all.  That one starts with admitting that we need healing and, like the woman who touched the hem of Jesus robe - often times it means taking a GARGANTUAN leap of faith. Asking faith to be deep if not very wide.  That woman? She was an outcast. She had been rejected by her community.  She was judged and declared not worthy. Unclean.  Dirty.  If the crowd had known what her illness was and that she was among them already having been declared unclean, they could have charged her criminally and the penalty? Death.  But she knew something had to give.  Nothing else had worked.  There just HAD to be an answer.  He was that answer.  Oh, my friend.  HE is always the answer.  

    I have walked through some pretty dark and difficult valleys over my over 60 years but the ones I've walked while I am healing the wounds of the heart and mind?  Those valleys were the darkest.  It was in one of those valleys that I heard the voice of Jesus proclaim that I, too, was His daughter and my faith had and would continue to make me well.  Do I have hard days?  Indeed.  When a loved one suffers from the emotional instability of addiction EVERYONE suffers.  When we have suffered an injury at the hands of another - something that was truly not our "fault" those wounds can take DECADES to heal.  But healing DOES happen if we're willing to press into the hard things that healing asks of us.  Like going out into a crowd, taking a risk, doing something different, giving just one more thing a shot. 

    I think I understand the desparation of the woman who touched Jesus.  She wanted relief.  She wanted healing and she was willing to do what was necessary to get it. She took a risk and she gained ....... peace.  And at the end of the day - through the hard of physical, emotional, spiritual, relational or financial healing that is the best end. Peace.  Peace that is all-encompassing.  Peace that says "I know God's got me and come what may, I'm going to be okay."  

    I don't know what the future holds, my friends.  But I know who holds the future and HE calls me (and you) His child.  His desire for us is healing ... and peace.  And if you have hesitated taking the steps toward healing, take my hand.  Doesn't matter where you start - just take the step.  We'll go together.  To stronger -- to better -- to peace. 

WGL - A2


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