Finding God At The End Of Your Rope: The True Tale Of The Bleeding Woman

Photo by Alex simplifier

This article details different medical issues and procedures, which some may find unsettling. Reader discretion is advised.

Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. The Little Mermaid. Fairy tales. The poor girl has some unbelievably cruel curse or task that just seems unfathomable, but in the end with a touch of magic, she triumphs. But you know, as the reader, that it’s just make-believe. Only make-believe has dragons or fairies or witches. Only make-believe has girls with hair that tumbles down the length of a tall tower. It’s some unrealistic health condition, like having a tail instead of legs, that makes for the best make-believe stories.

When reading the Bible as a young woman, I always saw certain stories presented in the rose-colored lenses of a fairy tale. They were interesting but… literally true? I mean, yes, the Bible was true, of course, but the science behind certain stories just didn’t add up to me. Like, maybe the author just didn’t have all the facts?

The story of the woman who had bled for twelve years was one such story. Bleeding for twelve years straight and she’s somehow still alive? That can’t be right. You can’t bleed for even a month straight without getting anemic and needing hospitalization. At least, that’s what I thought until I met Sarah.

She was coordinating volunteers for the children’s ministry at my church when I met her. She led with energy and a gleam of “there’s something more to me” in her eye. I felt an instant liking and decided I had to get to know her better. She invited me over to her home one day and as I sat on the edge of her swimming pool and soaked up the soft southern California sunshine, she told me her story, and my perceptions of those “fairy tales” shifted.

It was somewhere in the year 2017 when the heavy periods started for her. She was a mother four times over and at that point in her life where they might have considered her perimenopausal, so she chalked it up to age and just resigned herself to her fate. But as the months went by, she found herself exhausted, out of breath at the simplest tasks and literally forced to stay at home. As I mentioned, this woman had four children and as if that weren’t enough on her plate, she was also a military wife.

Imagine having four kids, at this point ages four, nine, twelve, and fifteen, but you’re trapped in your house and you’re completely out of energy. Imagine your husband is serving his country for months or years at a time, leaving you to fend for yourself in feeding and caring for your children and pets and caring for your home. Imagine the four-year-old needs stories read to them but you can’t really hold up the book. Imagine the nine-year-old has soccer practice but you can’t carry their water bottle out to the field for them — or stay for the game — because you’re afraid you’ll faint. Imagine your twelve-year-old is starting her own womanly ways and you’re at a loss to explain to her what is going on with your own body — imagine how much that might frighten her. Imagine you’ve got a fifteen-year-old son trying to learn to drive — and you just don’t have any energy to show him the ropes.

But a mom caring for four children and doing double duty as father and mother, left her putting herself in as last. She was working herself to the bone and self-care, although a lovely concept, was as far from her grasp as the east is from the west. This was life and you just get on with it, no matter how terrible you feel. Now, skip forward a couple of years.

By October of 2019, she wasn’t just having heavy periods. At this point, she was experiencing more time bleeding than not. She was finally forced to visit her doctor and have tests run. Her physician immediately sent her to the hospital where she was given intravenously two units of blood (a shocking amount for a “healthy” woman) and was referred to a specialist. The gynecologist she saw did an ultrasound and decided what she had was a fibroid.

A fibroid was wreaking havoc in her body, and she’d never even heard of such a thing before. But thanks to science, she wouldn’t have to die from this. Fibroids can be treated, she had options.

Now, travel back in time with me into the days of Jesus. This is a time when women’s rights, well, let’s say they haven’t been discovered yet. Your value, as a woman, was found in your offspring. Every woman in that era wants that masculine child who can one day care for her when her husband inevitably dies. There’s nothing worse than being infertile in this culture. It’s literally a death sentence for a woman as she can’t offer society what it most desires.

Tucked into the New Testament, in the book of Mark, we pick up the story of one such woman. She’s not given a name. She’s not given a fully realized back story. We don’t even know how she got there. We’re told in the fifth chapter, verse 25: “And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years.”

For twelve years we can assume this woman might have had an untreated fibroid of her own. Perhaps it had slowly developed and finally become impossible for her to hide. Maybe she had the same lack of energy and was also struggling just to walk across town. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her, not even knowing why she was bleeding.

But back to my friend Sarah. While waiting for a plan of action, and in less than two months since the first two units of blood, she was back in the hospital getting blood again. The gynecologist had three potential options for her to resolve the fibroid. The first was an endometrial ablation (uterus scraping or blading), the second was a hysterectomy, and the third was vascular embolization.

Sarah sat with this heavy diagnosis during the holidays, of all times to deal with terrifying news — but the situation was dire. In less than a full month, she was in the hospital yet again getting more blood. As she was slowly bleeding to death, she mothered through the holidays and researched her options.

The uterus scraping, or as some doctors refer to it, a D and C, had several terrifying risks and complications. She could be faced with infection, damaged uterus or cervical walls resulting in infertility, or — oddly enough — excessive bleeding. The hysterectomy offered a different set of complications aside from the obvious infertility, she might also have blood clots, urinary problems, and severe pain — not to mention required hormone treatments. The vascular embolization’s risks weren’t even a drop in the bucket when compared to the other options. The choice was simple. But then the other shoe dropped.

Let’s quickly pop back into the Bible for a moment. We’re given another simple sentence for our woman who bled. It says in the 26th verse: “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.”

I can’t imagine what it must be like to think you’ll have a cure and to hang all your hopes on that, only to be let down by your own blood.

Sarah understood that though. To qualify for the procedure, a series of tests had to be completed. Sarah was put on “the pill” and then the tidal wave really hit. The bleeding did not stop. This was in January of 2020. She needed more blood and now iron transfusions. By February of 2020, she was weak as a kitten, but the hospitals were also suddenly getting a lot busier. For those of you who know what hit our country in March of 2020, this is no surprise.

But for Sarah at that moment, being turned away from the hospital because the blood she needed was needed more urgently for patients with this new coronavirus, it was devastating. She couldn’t get the blood. She couldn’t even get into the hospital. They weren’t allowing patients in there unless they had the virus, and they certainly weren’t doing any surgeries that might not be fully effective. They told her she just needed to get the hysterectomy and put pressure on her to comply.

Let’s go back to our Bible story again. We read in the 27th and 28th verses the following: “When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”

Now that is faith. What powerful, moving, intense faith. She hears something. She believes it. She manifests it. Life experience has taught her not to dare to hope. Yet, just hearing about Jesus gives her hope.

Come with me back to Sarah. Turned away at the hospital, defeated, and exhausted, Sarah drove to church — partially because she didn’t have the energy to drive her car back to her home. She entered the church and spoke with the church secretary and barely able to stand, asked the pastors for prayer. She was at the end of her rope and the end of her hope.

But that’s just where we find Jesus, isn’t it? When we have nowhere else to go. When we have tried everything else. When we’re done kicking and screaming and struggling and crying and fighting. We can be still. And we can know that He is God.

After sitting with her pastors and praying, Sarah had the renewed strength to go back home. She had prayed for healing. She had left it all there at the feet of her Father — the one in Heaven, who knew her and loved her more than anyone else on this planet could even begin to understand. And she stepped out in faith, trusting God for that healing.

The ending of the story for the woman in the Bible is so beautiful and it goes hand in hand with my friends. Let’s compare — I’ll start at verse 29: “Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”

Sarah miraculously got approval for her procedure, despite it not being the preferred treatment of her specialist, and by the end of March — even in a pandemic and against all odds — Sarah received healing. The bleeding stopped and her uterus was undamaged. It was nothing short of a miracle that this procedure fully healed her.

But that’s not where either story ends. Here’s the most beautiful part of the story from the Bible, starting in verse 30: “At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’’ But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’”

I don’t doubt that the unnamed woman knew she had immediately been healed. I don’t doubt that she trembled with fear at Jesus. She knew Who He was. She knew He was God. She had felt His power. Like James 2:23, which states: “And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,’” — and he was called a friend of God. This woman was freed from her suffering because of her belief — her faith — in Jesus’ power.

My friend Sarah stood there waist-deep in pool water and playfully swishing the water with her hands as she told me her story. The warm California sun shone around her, and she smiled as she told me she knew Jesus. I don’t doubt it. I suddenly realized — there she was, this woman who was no longer the bleeding woman. She had a happy ending despite the pain, the struggle and the heartache. She was The Little Mermaid, a fairy tale, but she was real. She was a Princess — the Daughter of a King… she fell under a terrible curse and was nearly ruined by it. But her faith coupled with her trust in her Prince, and here she stood on two feet. She was the real deal, and I honestly don’t think anyone at Disney could have written her a better ending.

Perhaps those fairy tales aren’t so far-fetched. Well… maybe we’re not dealing with evil stepmothers or wicked witches all the time. But miracles still happen. I know several of them, walking around on this green earth. And I bet you do too. Take a moment to live in that truth today and be blessed by it.