I don’t want to miss this. I want it to be the case that I’m finally on the threshold of not just a new chapter of my life, but perhaps a third book in the tale. I want this new book to be the part when I become Joseph, matured by his slavery, bolstered with virtue, and possessed of irrevocable wisdom born of suffering. I have long lost the uninformed certainty of youth, but ever since, my faith has been feeble. I want my faith to have integrity and for it to have the force of deep, stable feeling.

I was thinking either last night or this morning, what a shame it was that I’ve gone so long, sought so many resources, and have yet to overcome my addiction. I can imagine having the same thought a decade hence. With the full meaning: God, forbid it.

This powerful story from the Gospel is timely then. This woman had been afflicted for twelve years, “and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse” (verse 26). What a sorry plight. And I nurse the submerged suspicion that her case was different from mine—a physical defect for which she could not be held accountable. My perennial disease is an “intolerable neural itch,” and I am entirely accountable for it. If only the binds we tie ourselves were as easy to unknot as sailor’s hitches.

The woman’s faith is of course remarkable. Christ’s power and the mechanisms of its release are more so, and His first response to the woman’s action invites awed speculation. Why does He ask her a question? Why did she have to acknowledge herself to Him? Most amazing to me is the woman’s response (after the disciple’s comic, almost insubordinate sarcasm in reply to Christ’s question). Mark says Jesus “looked around to see the woman who had done this,” seeming to imply that He knew who she was or that He really had to search for her in some way (verse 32).

I love her next move: “But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him, and told Him the whole truth” (verse 33). Was her discomfiture the mere embarrassment of being called out in a crowd? Or had she made a realization about Christ’s identity? After all, she was at last well, and she knew it, having “felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction” (verse 29). Maybe she was embarrassed, but she was also in awe—and who can imagine the relief, the joy, the rapture? And yet she, fearing and trembling, came back to Jesus, “fell down before Him, and told Him the whole truth” (verse 33).

What’s the meaning of her telling Jesus the whole truth? She might easily not have known He knew already, but Mark’s phrasing almost makes it seem she was confessing, testifying. The phrase in English, “told Him the whole truth,” connotes a sense of guilt somewhere, but that can’t be too relevant. She could be humbling herself for her effrontery, the slyness of her seeking Him, but that’s certainly incomplete, too. Her action, in gesture and speech, is pure, untrammeled worship.

Then what is the role of worship in all of this, and how does it apply to me? If I forget for a minute (and I’ve forgotten for months) that Jesus has already done the essential, finalizing miracle for me, in letting “the power proceeding from Him” to come forth into my life to stop the ever flowing, ever staining stream of my sin, accruing damnation upon damnation, by allowing himself to be stripped, skinned, and bled dry, giving me His pure garments in exchange for mined, caked in blood—if I ever forget that for a minute, I’m missing what I must not miss.

But if I don’t miss it, if I realize what He’s accomplished for me—that He has ended my affliction—then won’t I, too, like this woman, fall down before Him, having experienced in myself who He is, to confess His salvation in joy, awe, and gratitude? Won’t I truly begin to worship?

The glory and wholeness contained in Christ’s words: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your affliction” (verse 34).