God Wants More for You
I want to be done with infertility. To be healed and done with the whole struggle. It has gone on long enough. I'm tired. I plead for God to just give me a baby already. Haven't I waited enough? Just answer my prayer. Give me a baby! Can I just skip over this long process and get to the part where I happily have a child? Wouldn't that be easier for everyone involved?
But this isn't how God works. He isn't like Santa, giving us exactly what we asked for on our list, and then disappearing until the next year's request is ready to be fulfilled. And while we “know” He isn't like Santa, at times we still expect or wish that He would act like him.
But God always wants more for us.
The “Bleeding Woman” in Mark 5:25-34 embodies this view of God perfectly. This woman bled every day for 12 years. She went to doctor after doctor seeking a cure, hoping against hope that someone would be able to help her. But none of them did. The passage says she spent all of her money on treatments that only made her condition worse. There was no remedy, no relief from her pain.
To make matters worse she lived under the Jewish law, which indicted her as ritually unclean. Under these laws, her bleeding meant that she was a social outcast. Anyone who touched her became unclean. No one could hug her, comfort her, or be near to her. Much as a leper, she had to announce her unclean status as she walked the streets to warn others of her cursed uncleanness. Furthermore, she wasn’t allowed to worship in the temple with other women. Her world was lonely, isolated, and likely horribly depressing as she saw no end in sight to her current situation.
There was no cure and, after 12 years, I'm sure she just wanted to be done. To be healed and free of her affliction. Nothing else mattered.
This reminds me so much of our fellow endometriosis strugglers. For many of them, years have gone by in acute pain, only to have the doctor tell them that they simply have a low threshold for pain or that this is just how a woman's body reacts during her period, dismissing them and demeaning their experience. Once these women finally do have a diagnosis, they are told that there is no cure, nor do they know why it happens in the first place. The doctors are a dead end. Much like the experience of this woman from the book of Mark.
Where do we turn for help?
For the bleeding woman, she turned to the whispers that she heard about Jesus. Whispers that promised hope in healing just by being near this unknown prophet. I doubt she cared who He was or what His coming meant for the world. All she heard was healing.
And so, she went to Him, exposing herself as she walked among people who looked down on her and those who fled from her presence when she drew near. She risked everything to achieve that hope of healing. And it was granted. By a mere brush of her fingers along the fringe of Jesus' robe, she was instantly healed. She knew it and Jesus knew it.
Several times when Jesus healed in the Gospels, He did so in private or asked the person healed to keep quiet about what He had done. But not with this woman. He stops the entire crowd to find her. He seeks her out, making her healing a public affair.
Why?
Because Jesus wanted more for her.
He knew she was content to hide in the crowd, slinking away with her newly healed body, never coming face to face with the One who healed her. She received what she came for and that was all she thought she needed.
Jesus knew she had faith, as she had come to Him for healing, but He also knew that it was incomplete. It was a faith based on magic and miraculous healing, but devoid of a person, barren of a relationship with the one true God.
So, He stopped. He called her to Him because Jesus is always relational. He wanted more for her than just an answered prayer or healed body. He wanted to be near to her, to be part of her life. He wanted to give of Himself to her.
He wanted to heal the barrenness of her heart.
This woman would always have more trials to face, but now she would know Him. And that would change everything. Now when He tells her that she is healed and can go in peace, it's actually possible. She isn't alone anymore, she has Him. And joy is extended to her because she knows the One who is joy itself. She is now intimately acquainted with the One who can satisfy every need and desire.
And this is true for you as well. As you plead with our Father to answer your prayer for a child, seek His face in the process. Open yourself to Him, asking Him to reveal Himself to you in new ways as you face this struggle with infertility. And He will meet you there. That is a promise.
Brooke Delaney lives in Colorado where she loves to teach Scripture, cook, and gawk at her beloved mountains like a tourist. She writes on infertility and God-related struggles at http://www.singobarrenone.weebly.com
