K.J. Ramsey knows what it’s like to ask for healing and just keep hurting. She lives with seven diseases and the scars of spiritual abuse and used to believe her body was a barrier to freedom and joy. But when healing didn’t happen in the way she begged for, she started to encounter the broken body of Jesus in ways she never had before. And in the cross, she found the courage to want more than a cure. Through valuing her own humanity and body as much as Christ’s, she began to heal. It’s a grace to welcome my friend KJ to the farm’s table today… 

Guest Post by K.J. Ramsey

It takes courage to hope for healing.

There’s a woman in the gospels whose hope holds mine. She bled for 12 years, spent all she had on help, and only got sicker. When she heard about Jesus, she knew in her gut—if she touched even just the hem of his clothes, she would be healed. 

Healing happens when hard things are heard and held in safe spaces.

She never gave up on herself. 

This past winter marked 14 years since I first started crying out for healing. Sometimes we talk about what we’d say to our younger selves to give them hope. But over one weekend this winter, my younger self spoke to me.

I was in bed, recovering from a particularly hard treatment of intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIG). Frankly, I was sinking into my pillows from the lead weight of hopelessness on my chest as much as the post-infusion fatigue. My recovery wasn’t going as well as the time before, and I felt stupid for hoping it could get better.

I opened up my own book of prayers to the story of Jesus healing the woman who bled for twelve years (Luke 8:43-44), and I let the self who wrote the following words over a year ago pray on behalf of my present self:

Jesus,
you who lived so aware
you could sense a woman’s dare
to touch the hem of your robe in trust
that in your orbit her suffering
could scatter like dust:

you are the one
who honors those
who risk hoping
to be well.

Help us hear
that you have noticed
we are here
so we can receive
what you promised her,
a life that is healed and whole.

Amen, our Healer and Lord.

—The Book of Common Courage, p. 62

Bearing witness to my own weariness ushered me into the crowd with the woman who bled, where I could sense the strange and holy wonder that God sees me.

I want you to know that healing and curing are two different things, and the presence of pain doesn’t block you from the promise of healing. 

My slightly younger self—who could bless our audacious hope to heal—carried the hopeless self of that day toward the hands and heart of Christ. 

I am not cured, but I am healing. 

I’ve had prayers thrust on me like daggers to cut away the distress of my diseases as though faith is the fine edge of a blade we take to our brokenness. No unasked for prayer has ever lifted my burden or vanished my vulnerability. But every time someone—including my own self—bears witness to the beauty of how, like this woman, I never give up on wholeness for my own body, I heal. 

I want you to know that healing and curing are two different things, and the presence of pain doesn’t block you from the promise of healing. 

When we conflate curing with healing we miss the slow miracle of wholeness. What I have studied and witnessed time and again in my own life and as a trauma therapist is that the wounds we wish we could excise from our lives are actually the way into wholeness. 

The way into wholeness is through the wound. 

So much of our pain is a prompt, a knocking on the door of our dismissed and defeated adult selves to hear and hold the little children within us who are still afraid, aching, and angry for being harmed and not being fully held.

When we answer the door, we welcome back home into the heart of God the parts of ourselves that have felt too orphaned and alone to hope.

And when we answer the door, we welcome back home into the heart of God the parts of ourselves that have felt too orphaned and alone to hope. Your body will not have to knock so furiously with pain on the door of your consciousness when she knows you will always answer the door. 

Healing happens when hard things are heard and held in safe spaces.

When the woman who bled for twelve years was healed, Jesus said it was her faith that made her well.

Religious folks ostracized her as too unclean to belong and she spent everything she had for help. But she never labeled herself as unworthy of healing. 

We only see the giant grace at the end of twelve years of grit, but the miracle includes the majesty that she never gave up on herself. 

Healing isn’t praying away the parts of ourselves that hurt. 

Healing is the slow miracle of never giving up on yourself. 

You do not need to think
your way to faith
fierce enough to frighten
fragility into a footnote.

You do not need to lace
your lips with lustrous prayers
or pound your chest in penance
for the puzzle of your pain.

You do not need to be
hopeful or pleasant,
stumbling severed from your story
and the truth your body bears.

You only need to let
your hidden hurt
come with you
and reach your fingers
toward the Love who stands
with scars still on his hands. 

Your body brings
your story
everywhere you go.

And faith says
come with me;
I won’t leave you
alone.

Come whole,
weary, weak
to the corners
where you’ve long
been pushed aside.

Come with the courage
of the crucified.

His body brings
his story
everywhere
we go.

And faith says,
he comes with me;
he won’t leave me
alone. 

Your body brings
your story
where Christ
makes you
his home.

—The Book of Common Courage, p. 60-61

Dare to bring your brokenness with you into the crowded corners of your own mind. Let all the judgmental voices of the crowd you’ve internalized for years fade away as you tune in to the courageous knocking of your younger self at the door of your heart—no matter what form her knocking takes.

Healing is the slow miracle of never giving up on yourself. 

Pain. Anxiety. Panic attacks. They are all pleas to find shelter inside. 

Watch the wonder of what happens as you practice hospitality toward the parts of yourself that are in pain.

Be astounded by the slow miracle of treating your ache as something worth anointing.

Settle into the safety of Christ making you his home.

And then open the door to everyone still stuck in the storm. 

[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotional. ]