Simple Touch

I've always loved the story in the New Testament of the woman with the issue of blood. I love her for her twelve years of lonely solitude, being unclean and unable to participate in her society as a "normal" female would. I love her for her humble yearning, that she would not be like some who brazenly ask Jesus for a blessing, but rather hope that there might be such reserves of overflowing power in His person that her unobtrusive touch would go unnoticed by Him and still change her life completely. I love her for her faith. And for her courage when she tells Him all, not knowing how He might respond. Powerful people are not always kind.

But as I sat tonight reading my book on my bed, tearful because of my own heart circumstances and the trials that come simply from being mortal in a fallen world, my mind caught hold of her in a different light than before.

I was berating myself, as is my ignorant and misguided way, for being seemingly incapable of the kind of goodness I aspire to. I want to be like God. Holy. Patient. Loving. Perfect. I wanted to delve into my scriptures for hours, and pray with unwavering faith, and serve my family with endless selflessness. But I am incapable of those things right now. And I was feeling the consequence must be a life and heart with dim light. A little heaven but mostly heathen. A little faith but mostly fear. Not the life I'd hoped to be leading when my 28th birthday was a few days away. Twenty-eight years ... surely enough time for more than I've become.

Then the thought of this unnamed New Testament heroine entered my mind with the thought, "Touching the Master's robe was a small and simple thing." Then a flood of the simple efforts I make to come close to Him passed through my mind. Little things that I criticized myself over because they weren't bigger and grander came into my mind as praise from heaven. Perhaps the unnamed woman could have made more effort ... maybe she even considered herself lazy or cowardly. But she touched His robe and it was enough.

It's 4am right now and I'm not writing clearly, but I'm feeling clearly. And I'm feeling that the Lord is more grateful for the faith behind even small effort than I'd realized. He is always better than I realize. I feel He spends His energy praising the faith I have rather than criticizing the faith I have yet to develop.

It reminds me of putting curtains up in Chiara's room last week. I asked her to go get me a chair from the kitchen because my hands were full and if I moved I'd lose the place on the wall I'd measured for the curtain rod. As I heard her coming back with the chair my heart melted. It was so much harder for her than it would have been for me to go get it myself and remeasure the wall. As I watched her struggle to shimmy the chair across the carpet, carrying it for short spurts then needing to put it down again, I was so pleased with her. And grateful. Because she was doing it for me. Because I'd asked her to. And I loved her for it. Not because she did it perfectly, because she didn't, but because of her effort.

"What a good girl." I thought.

And right now I feel willing to hope and even believe that my Father in Heaven looks at me the same way.