the bleeding woman speaks

she says, “God.
Long have I been reaching,
Kneeling, aching heavenward—
Practicing for the day I might touch your cloak.
Yet even now as you approach
I am unsure if I want to risk again
The deafening weight of your silence.
To remain the chosen one you chose not to heal
For whatever sovereign reason,
Or for no reason at all—this itself is death.
I have heard you that are Good.
Is it your Goodness that keeps me
Imprisoned by pain, ashamed,
Untouched, and unseen?
Goodness has abandoned me.
Nevertheless, I cry out:
Baruch atah Adonai!
With dirt on my knees
And blood on my hands
I am reaching, reaching
And you, my Lord!
Are turning,
Turning.”

This week, my precious sister was hospitalized.

She is at home and doing better now, so strong and so brave—but I am not. This week, I have learned something about myself that I wish wasn’t true:

I do not know what to do when God goes quiet.

Despite my faith and believing, there are times when the silence of God screams louder than His promises, when the overwhelming evidence points to a God who is slow to rescue, to heal, to redeem. At such times I yearn to hear the Voice which calmed the storms, but I am met only with the disappointing echoes of my broken questions:

Where do I turn when the wellspring of Life runs dry?

I’m reminded of a moment between Jesus and his disciples in John 6. At a time when many of Jesus’ disciples were leaving him, John writes: “Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, ‘Are you also going to leave?’ Simon Peter replied,

‘Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.’”

Simon’s was a bold proclamation. In reading this passage from a place of pain and uncertainty, I sense that his words of faith also contained a hint of desperation. They echo the words of Asaph in Psalm 73:

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.”

Jesus himself cried out the words of Psalm 22 as he died on the cross:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?”  

There are no easy answers here, except the comforting knowledge that we are in the company of disciples and psalmists and even Jesus when we pray,

“Where are you? Yet whom do I have but You?”

It is a scary thing to entrust the entirety of myself to God, knowing that if I don’t have Him, I am destitute. Yet this is the place that faith asks me to live—the place between the question and the answer—the waiting place of silence as I ache for the Voice of Love to speak, to heal. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” the psalmist David tells us—even when we cannot sense His nearness. In such times, perhaps faith looks like turning towards God in our wrestling and daring to proclaim with Jacob,

“I will not let You go unless You bless me.”

How utterly terrifying.

How utterly necessary, and somehow wonderful, that our questions gape like freshly opened wounds and keep us close to the wounded side of Christ.