Choosing to be Well

“Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk.’ Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.” (John 5:2-9) 

This is one of my favorite gospel stories. There are so many beautiful things about it and for me, personally, it had a profound impact on my life. On my faith journey I have come to know the Lord and I believe in his love and mercy but for a long time I struggled with believing that he loved me intimately and that he would have died on the cross even if I was the only one here on earth that needed to be redeemed. In 2009, I had been seeing a counselor for a couple of years, had been through Christ Renews His Parish (CRHP) and had a Spiritual Director but there was something deep down that prevented me from believing that God loved, me. I have a friend who taught me to pray the gospels and I have had some beautiful moments where God revealed his Truth to me through this kind of prayer experience. So as I began to pray this gospel I was open to what God wanted to reveal to me. Whenever I heard this gospel before, I pictured the man as someone very old and crippled with arthritis. But as I meditated on it I began to see that I was the person at the portico who had been ill for thirty-eight years. I asked God what that meant and he took me back to something I experienced as a child. I was seven years old and heard these words screamed at me, “I hate you and wish you had never been born.” Those words had crippled me for thirty-eight years. That incident was the root of my lack of self-worth, my feelings of always being on the outside looking in, and my belief that I wasn’t lovable, even by God. And at that moment Jesus was asking me, “Do you want to be well?”

It is our choice. We all have wounds to be healed whether they are caused by others or self inflicted. Healing isn’t just a onetime thing. It will continue to occur throughout our lives. Each time we sin we wound our souls and God is constantly calling us back to him. Sometimes we nurse our wounds, we keeping playing over and over in our minds the hurt that was done to us but this only hurts ourselves and keeps us from living as we were created to live, in the Light of Christ. My healing wasn’t instantaneous like this man in the gospel but getting to the root of this wound did allow me to have a better understanding of why I struggled with those things and allowed me to be more open to God’s love. Today I am confident in God's love for me and I know he desires each of us to be whole so I continue to pray for the courage to lay it all before him so that he can continue the healing process.