Lately I’ve been continuing to think about the story in Mark 5 with the unnamed woman with the twelve-year bleeding problem and the dying twelve-year-old girl. I’ve found myself asking questions of the characters I hadn’t thought to ask before. Like, how old is the bleeding woman? I had always imagined her to be an old lady (probably based on the classic pictures in the kids’ Bibles featuring her shriveled hand grasping at the edges of Jesus’ dreamy beauty pageant sash). But as it turns out, the Bible doesn’t actually say that. She could be my age for all we know. So as I read this story, for the first time ever I felt like maybe I could relate to this woman. And as I kept asking questions and imagining her life, I started wondering if I’d ever related to a Bible character more than this woman…
What was her life like before this bleeding problem? Did she live with family or siblings that she adored? Was she married to a faithful husband she had grown to love? Had she known the joy of raising children with him? In what ways did she enjoy contributing to society in her small town? Did she teach the children songs about the God of their ancestors, or love to dance the dances of the grape harvest with her sisters and friends? What were the hopes and dreams she held close to her heart for the family she had, or the family that would one day be?
And then one day: blood. She would be considered ritually unclean and have to be in isolation for seven days after the bleeding had stopped. Seven days without those she loved, seven days without the embrace of those who loved her. But seven days became seven weeks, became seven months, became…twelve years. Twelve years of loss of everything she had once loved. Her dreams of family? Crushed. The reality of family life as she had once known? Shattered.
Her life became one of pushing through. Pushing through pain—physical pain from her hemorrhaging, emotional pain at the loss of everything she had loved and hoped for, and I’m sure even spiritual pain. She would no longer have been allowed to enter the Temple (where the Presence of God was) to pray or ask God why this was happening, because she was unclean. So for twelve years she pushed through, her pain growing worse with each visit to a doctor, her money dwindling along with her hope.
All of my empathy alarms go off as I think of this poor woman and the tragedy of a life of pushing through. But then, ironically, I think about our world and how much of a badge of honor it is to be seen as a person who pushes through. The more someone is able to accomplish while being sick, the more we respect them. The busier a person’s life, the more we esteem them. Our favorite stories are of the underdogs who came from nothing but worked really hard and, against all odds, pushed through to become champions.
I don’t know if I was aware of this societal value yet when I first started taking this on as a personality trait. Back in high school, talking about how I had to balance my busy practice schedule with homework for AP classes and musical rehearsals and church activities made me feel valuable. I still remember the hit to my pride when one of my parents’ friends retorted with, “You think you’re busy now? Wait until you’re out of college when…” and then went on to detail their daughter’s busy schedule. I definitely wasn’t competitive at all, so it definitely didn’t push me to work even harder.
I didn’t realize until halfway through college that my identity had become entirely consumed with being “the one who could push through.” It would soon prove to be problematic to my health. Despite being repeatedly discouraged from majoring in two instruments at such a rigorous music school, I knew I could push through and do it, like I always had. But I started getting sick…a lot. My professors kept telling me it was time to choose an instrument and drop the other. But pushing through had gotten me addicted to the feeling of unlimited potential and possibilities. And if I dropped a major, that would mean admitting that I had limitations to what I could do and what I could push through, and, therefore, limitations to who I was and who I could become.
It’s almost funny, it took a performance injury that I physically couldn’t push through to begin unwinding the tangled mess of my identity. After a year of recovery, and a transfer to an (easier) music school, I was finally able to drop to a single major. But since I was no longer the one who could push through, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
My brain took this as the perfect opportunity to prove that, instead, my identity was that I was a burden. If I couldn’t do all the things, something was wrong with me. And if something was wrong with me, that meant that every time something small went wrong, every time someone was disappointed in the slightest, every time I wasn’t able to carry what I had deemed my “fair share” and someone else picked up a responsibility, it was my fault. I just couldn’t do enough, because I couldn’t push through enough to do it all.
Even now with a debilitating chronic illness, I find myself plagued by many of these same thoughts. I should be able to push through these symptoms, right? But when I try, they only get worse. Something must be wrong with me that I have this illness. I can’t do anything. I can’t contribute to society. I can barely contribute in my own home. I’m a burden to my husband who works all day, then comes home to drive me to doctor appointments and take care of chores around the house. I’m a burden to my family who is worried about me from states away. I’m a burden to friends and mentors who are helping emotionally care for me. I’m a burden to my work teammates who don’t have what they need because of my vacant position. I’m a burden to my employer and doctors who have to fill out disability paperwork for me. I’m a burden to society because I’m contributing nothing, just taking. There must be something terribly wrong with me that I have such limitations to what I can do and what I can push through…and that says everything about who I am and who I can become.
Years ago, I was sharing my fear of being a burden with my college boyfriend, and he responded with words that would later come back to haunt me—”Wouldn’t it be so cool if one day God healed you of that by just having you be a total burden, unable to do anything?” Needless to say, our relationship didn’t last.
Fast forward eight years and here I am, unable to do anything, sitting on the couch feeling like a total burden, writing a blog about God healing a woman of her mysterious illness and meeting her in her fear of being a burden…and asking God to do the same for me. (Ugh, I hate that the boyfriend was right.)
As I’ve now been off work for six months, I find myself approaching this woman’s story with some of the same questions that I’ve been wrestling with: doctors are expensive, where did the money come from that she paid to the countless doctors who continually found no cure? The text says she spent all she had on these doctors, but for a woman in this culture, that money had to have originated from someone else. Who bore the weight of her financial burden—her husband, her parents, her relatives? And now having run out, did she live her life as a beggar, burdening the people of her town as she pleaded for help? Did she live as an outcast in a camp similar to that of lepers? Or was she a complete dependent on her family, burdening them not only financially, but also by bringing them dishonor and making them unclean with her very presence?
In such a familial culture, what was her identity now? There was no hope of who she might become. This mysterious illness had stolen either her family from her or her child-bearing years. And in her day, a woman’s worth was in raising a family. Not only had this honor been taken from her, but the shame of sickness had been cast upon her, and one of uncleanness besides. In ancient near eastern thought, illness and disability were considered to be caused either by your sin or that of your ancestors. I can only imagine the shame-ridden thoughts as she laid awake at night—what did I do to deserve this? What is wrong with me? What must I do to fix myself and become clean again?
But her questions were useless because she couldn’t do anything. Everyone and everything that she touched would be considered unclean. There was no more contributing to society or family life. Pushing through was no longer about doing, it was about surviving by not doing, by staying out of the way. So, as she had done for twelve years now, she stayed in the shadows with her pain. The pain that had stolen everything from her—her money, her dignity, her sense of worth, her chance at a normal life. The pain that had brought shame on her and her whole family and literally banned her from seeking the presence of God.
But then one day a miracle-working prophet came to her town. She didn’t know it yet, but since she couldn’t seek the presence of God in the Temple, God came to her. The crowds pressed around him, but something in her told her she had to get close to him, that she had to touch him. Yes, she knew what that would mean for him and for her as an unclean woman. But somewhere deep within her, she felt a glimmer of hope she hadn’t experienced in years. She had to. But maybe she could do it in such a way that she could stay in the shadows. He wouldn’t even have to know! That way she wouldn’t burden him by being another needy beggar. Plus if he didn’t know someone unclean had touched him, technically he wouldn’t be burdened by her uncleanness. So once more, she pushed through, this time pushing through her shame as she hid her face from every person in that crowd she touched as she elbowed past until she was just close enough to reach out her hand and touch Jesus’s clothes.
“Who touched me?” Every time I’ve read Jesus’ response, it sends shivers down my spine as I imagine his voice booming with accusation. But what if it was actually brimming with compassion? If he knew someone had purposefully touched his clothes in this crowd, and that someone had been healed by it, did he also know that it was her? Was his question, then, perhaps less about identifying her, and more about pointing to her identity that he was about to completely rewrite?
As I look at Jesus and his interactions with others in Scripture, I have to imagine that there must have been something about him that made people feel safe to come out of hiding. Maybe, for the first time in twelve years, as she came forward trembling, this unnamed woman felt seen. Seen not through the eyes of someone who would identify her by her illness, seen not as someone who was simply a burden who had to be taken care of, seen not for her potential or dis-potential, but truly…seen. Being healed of her disease was a beautiful gift, but that alone was not what freed her from being a burden, or being the one who pushes through.
When Jesus sees her, he uses the same words that the synagogue leader uses to describe his beloved daughter who is dying. He looks at this outcast woman, loves her, and calls her precious daughter. He gives her a new identity, completely separate from what she can do or what she can become. He claims the estranged woman as his own family—the unlovable as his beloved.
These were the words she had been longing to hear for twelve long years. The words that restored to her what had been stolen from her. The words that healed what had been aching inside of her. And I think maybe those are the words of healing I need to hear right now too.
Religion had literally left her outside of its walls, but God came and brought the Kingdom to her. And if I had to guess, I don’t think he would say that was a burden to him, I think he would say that was his purpose all along.