Kacie: After thinking about how to do this, I thought it would be easiest to present it from the woman’s point of view after she had been healed. So I envision the scene opening with you (as the woman) standing in your little kitchen sweeping or washing the dishes or some routine household chore like that—keeping in mind that this woman probably had not been able to do any of these things for the past 12 years because of her illness. So she performs the routine chore with joy and appreciation for being able to do it at all.
Sighing contentedly, the woman stops her work. “Oh, my,” she says. “I’m tired.” Slowly, she smiles. “Yes, I am tired. And it feels so good! It feels so good to be tired from working and caring for my family – and not from laying in bed with an illness no doctor could cure.”
“Twelve years. Twelve years I was sick! Twelve years of exhaustion and pain. Twelve years of watching everyone around me live their lives while all I could do was watch and wish – wish that I could be whole, like them. Wish that the doctors could find some way to help me. Wish that I could just have the strength to do something as trivial as sweeping my own floor or … or, braiding my own hair! (At this point, if you were wearing your hair in a long braid, you could kind of touch the braid with a sense of wonder and awe.)
You know, I was even beginning to question God. I just didn’t understand how he could let this thing happen to me. And yet, I knew that there must be a reason. And I knew He cared. In my darkest moments, when it was almost impossible to feel anything but pain and despair, I could feel God. I could feel His love. And I hung on to that feeling with every last bit of strength that I had.
And then, one day as I was lying in my bed after a particularly bad night, a neighbor came to visit me. She said she couldn’t stay long because this man named Jesus had come to our town and she wanted to go see him. She had heard that he might be passing near where we lived.
“Jesus,” I thought. Even as sick and bedridden as I was, I had heard of this Jesus. People were saying he was a mighty prophet. They were saying he could do miracles.
After my neighbor left, all I could think about was this man named Jesus. Could he really do what people said? Could he maybe even help me?
I decided I must try to see him. I carefully rose from my bed, praying that God would give me the strength to find Jesus and ask him for his help. One step at a time, I made my way outside, and then began to walk towards the center of our town. (Kacie—you can act all of this out as you are telling it.) I had not gone very far when I heard the noise. It was the sound of a large crowd of people, coming my way. “It is Jesus!” I thought, and joy leapt in my heart. I was actually going to be able to see him! But then the crowd rounded the corner and I saw the huge press of people, and my heart broke. How could I, a sick woman, ever make my way through all those people?
But then the crowds parted briefly and I saw Him. I saw Jesus. And there was such kindness in His face. Such love. Such compassion. I felt like I had known him forever, and yet I had never seen him before.
In that moment, I knew I had to reach him. Gathering all my strength, I pressed forward into the crowd. As the people pushed and jostled and bumped into me, I found it hard to breathe and even harder to stand. I could feel myself getting weaker but I knew I could not stop. If I could just get close enough to … to what? This man obviously had very important things to do and lots of people who needed him. Who was I to demand his attention?
But maybe there’s another way, I thought. And at that moment, I felt my strength finally give way. I crumpled to the ground. But as I lay there, gasping for breath and struggling to rise to my feet, I saw that Jesus was only a short distance in front of me. Without thinking, I reached out my hand and touched the hem of his garment.
(Pause here.)
And I was healed.
(Another pause.)
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. But then I heard Him speak. He said, “Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.”
The men who were with him tried to argue with him, saying with all the people crowding around him it was impossible for him to notice one touch among the many, but he insisted he had specifically felt one person touch him.
Now I was frightened. He was obviously a very powerful person. Maybe his power was only supposed to be for very important people. I was not anyone important! Was I going to be in trouble? I just wanted to run away and hide. So I stood up and started to back away, but then he turned and looked at me, and I knew he knew.
Trembling, I fell down before him, and told him what I had done, and how I had been healed immediately. And then I waited to see if he would be angry with me. but all he said was, “Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.”
And so I went back to my home. For a while I had people coming by all the time, wanting to see “the woman who was healed” and wanting to hear the story. But no one comes anymore. They’ve all pretty much forgotten about it. But I will never forget. Never.
