Prodigal: I’m ready.
Me: For what?
Prodigal: Your story.
She knew. What did she know. She knew what the others in the crowd did not know. How did she know? She had been watching him. She heard the way he spoke. She listened to the quietness and then the loudness of his voice at times.
She also would look into his eyes. Those eyes. Well they could tell a story. They always told a story. They were filled with a love she had never known before. They were filled with compassion and a peace. How could his eyes say so much even when he was just standing there? How could he seem to be speaking to her with so many others around?
Of course she also saw what he did. That was why there was a crowd. That was why there always seemed to be a crowd. They were there for what he did. She was there because she knew who he was. She knew who he was without even meeting him. She knew that this is where she must be.
There it was disrupting her thoughts again. There it was taken away the peace and the comfort. It was the pain that was always there for the past 12 years. It had caused her to be different. The others knew. She tried to hide it. She tried to live normal. She could not. There was the pain and always the bleeding. At first she thought this would only last for a short time. This was only a minor detail in her life. This would be soon forgotten as she got on with her life. After the many physicians and bills later she was in pain alone.
Now though was the added pain of rejection of not being able to be normal. Not being able to laugh and joke and have hope that tomorrow will be a good day. The pain was all around her. The pain made her cry out when she was alone and there was no one to hear her despair. Her cries would say in sorrow. How did she get here? How can she make it till tomorrow? Those had been the words that always remains in her soul no matter what is going on around her. It creates an emptiness that allows her to know that she is not whole. That her part of her is no longer living. That is a part of her is so dark that lightness has not been able to touch it.
What was she doing now? She knew that today was the time. She had been crying out to him in her dreams. She had been crying out to him while the pain engulfed her whole body. The answer she got was to touch him would make her whole. She had told no one of the dreams. She had told no one of the answer.
Of course people were talking about him. Look at all he did. They talked as if he was from God, they talked as if he was from the devil. They also just talked of their own selfishness. Some only wanted to be around him to meet others of influence. Some just wanted the benefits from some of the people he knew. Some though knew him like she did. Some knew that he was the one. Something in her dreams though told her that only she knew that touching him would make her whole.
She was slow and small. She had learned over the years how to best avoid attention and learned how to be quiet. Sometimes the attention for her difference hurt her worse than the pain in her body. So she learned early on how to become unnoticeable with people around. She had learned how to get places and not be seen. So it was this skill on this day that slowly brought her threw the crowd.
The day was sunny with a couple of clouds in the sky. The sun had been up for several hours. He had been busy the day before and she knew that today would be busy as well. She knew that today was the day she had to touch him.
She started in the back of the crowd and made slow invisible like movements to the front. There he was walking. His garments appeared normal but not him. He was the man that she had learned to love in her dreams. He was the man that had given her hope while she called out to him alone. Now, her life was going to change forever.
She took a deep breath and touched the border of his garment. That was all she needed. She knew he was that powerful. As her fingers lightly touched his robe so not to disturb him she felt it immediately. The feeling was covered in warmth. There was a peace and lightness in that moment. There was no darkness and all pain was gone. Anything negative had vanished in the instant that she had touched him. So in that moment she knew the impossible had happened.
She was whole! She was healed! She had just touched the divine and was made alive! There was no pain but more than that, there was no loneliness. She had never known love like this. She had never known the healing she needed for her loneliness.
Before she could think more he spoke. ” Who touched my clothes?” The other men with him did not see her and quickly try to say nobody. She sighed with relief. She just wanted to disappear. She did not want to upset this man who had given her so much. She did not want to disturb what he had to do. Then he spoke again “Who touched me?” That is when he turned to look at me.
He looked right at me. The woman who had learned how to disappear from everyone could not disappear from him. Before even taking another breath she fell down at his feet with fear and trembling and the words came out before she could even think. Then the man who she had been watching. The man who she had known in her dreams looked her in her eyes and with the voice full of compassion and love said, “Daughter, thy faith hath, made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy affliction.
As she walked away. She did not try to hide. She did not watch others and their lives. She walked away whole with a smile on her lips and tears slowly falling down her cheek. She walked away knowing that she would see him again. He would come again for her and then there would be no more separation and he would love her for eternity.
Matthew 9:20-22
And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment. For she said within herself, If I may but touched the hem of his garment. I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
