When Healing Spoke My Name

The poet is awakened 

“For twelve years
I had been known
not by my name,
but by my wound.
The woman with the bleeding.
The unclean one.
The one to avoid.

I learned to live
on the edges of crowds,
to keep my distance,
to carry my shame quietly.

For twelve years
I watched life pass by
from the other side
of an invisible wall.

Then Jesus came.
I did not seek His attention.
I wanted only a touch,
only enough of Him
to make me whole.
If I could just touch His garment,
I thought,
that would be enough.

And it was.
Power flowed.
The bleeding stopped.
My body knew
what my heart scarcely dared believe.
I was healed.

Then He stopped.
The crowd pressed around Him.
Yet He searched.
“Who touched Me?”

My heart raced.
I trembled.
I wanted to disappear.
But His eyes found me.
I fell before Him,
fear and hope
warring within me,
and told Him everything.

Then He spoke.
Not “Woman.”
Not “You there.”
Not even my sickness.
He called me

“Daughter.”
And suddenly
the healing was no longer
just in my body.

Daughter.
One word,
yet it broke twelve years
of loneliness.

Daughter.
A word that gathered up
all my rejection,
all my shame,
all my hidden tears.

Daughter.
In that moment
I was no longer
the woman with the issue of blood.

I was no longer
my condition,
my failure,
my sorrow.
I belonged.

I was seen.
I was wanted.
I was loved.

The crowd saw my disease.
Jesus saw His daughter.
And though the bleeding ceased
the moment I touched His garment,
the deeper healing came
when He touched my heart
with a single word.