A few months ago, I found myself asking the Lord what needed to change. Was it our routine? Did we need more support? Was there something I wasn't seeing? I kept turning the questions over, certain that if I could just name the right problem, I could fix it.
Around that same time, we shared a bit of our story with someone, and they said something I couldn't shake: "It sounds like y'all have been in a season of healing."
Healing wasn't the word I would have chosen. Survival, maybe. A ton of change, definitely. Exhaustion, at times. But healing? The more I sat with it, the more I realized I had spent so much energy trying to figure out what needed to change that I had never stopped to admit the simplest thing: I needed healing. And underneath that, harder to say out loud, I wanted it.
The Question I Used to Skip
That realization brought me back to a story in John 5. For years I would read right past the question Jesus asks a man who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years: "Do you want to be made well?" The answer seemed obvious. Of course he did. Why even ask?
It doesn't seem so obvious to me anymore. Not because any of us want to suffer, but because we can grow so familiar with a diagnosis, a wound, a disappointment, or a long and difficult season that it starts to shape how we see ourselves. We learn to live around it, we expect it to stay, and sometimes it becomes part of who we are without our ever deciding to let it. Maybe that is exactly why Jesus asked, because there is a real difference between needing healing and wanting it, and sometimes we don't recognize that gap until someone asks us out loud.
"There is a real difference between needing healing and wanting it, and sometimes we don't recognize that gap until someone asks us out loud."
A Question I'm Still Learning to Ask
I think about that question often in my own work. As a nurse practitioner, I tend to hesitate before asking patients the harder, more personal things, the questions like, "Do you think your mindset might have something to do with this?" I worry it will land wrong. But the longer I sit with people, the more I find myself wanting to ask it anyway, gently, at the end of an appointment. Jesus asked it with a boldness and a grace I'm still learning from, going straight to the heart of the matter: do you want to be well?
You might find that question strange, even a little unkind. The idea that anyone living with illness or a long struggle would ever answer no can seem impossible. But in a culture where so many of us feel more isolated and alone than ever, I've come to understand how a person can find a real comfort in an identity, even when that identity is a diagnosis. There can be an ease in having something to blame, something that explains why things are the way they are.
I say all of this as someone who has lived it. In my own recent season of feeling stuck and asking God what needed to change, it was the moment I finally acknowledged that I needed healing, and that I wanted it, that the rest began to fall into place. The circumstances didn't all resolve overnight, but something in me shifted, and that shift changed everything that came after.
If This Stirs Something Up in You
If this stirs something up in you, or even rubs you the wrong way, I'd gently encourage you to sit with it rather than push it away. A few questions I've found worth asking honestly:
- What do I perceive that I gain by holding onto this diagnosis, this struggle, or this season?
- Does it give me something to talk about, a way to be seen?
- Has it become part of my identity?
- Does it bring attention, even when that attention is negative?
- Does it give me a reason, or an excuse, to step back from other responsibilities?
None of these questions are meant to shame. They're meant to set us free. Because before the routines and the protocols and the next thing we think we need to fix, there is one honest question worth answering first.
Do you want to be made well?
