Heal Yourself Already

¹⁰¹¹Take up your mat and walk.

The healing here is completely participatory. Jesus makes this guy DO something, probably something he doesn't want to do in the first place. Isn't most healing like that? Who wants to hear that your knee problem will get better if you just *ahem* stop putting so much weight on it? When I have an ache or a pain I will sometimes not tell my husband, who teaches yoga and will suggest helpful poses. My preferred method is to pop some Aleve, then curl up and whimper till it passes.

I'll never forget the powerful shrink who told me that I had processed my childhood traumas enough, it was time to let go, time to stop seeing the world through a victim's eyes. "Sure," I said. "I'll just do that." Interesting. Sarcasm had rarely filled me to the point where it bulged out of my eyes like that. But, really. Didn't she know that I longed to do it, that I was in therapy because it seemed impossible? But she just sat there, fixing me with those intense blue eyes, not backing down.

I definitely didn't want to do group therapy, psychodramas, therapy with actual physical contact with others. And it, um, worked. I never would have believed that I could heal with my family. That I could be married. I wanted to keep doing the same thing - screwing up relationships with men, avoiding Thanksgiving and telling my sad tale to therapists. I could have lain by that pool for 38 years, thinking, Today for sure. Had Jesus asked me if I wanted to be healed, I am sure I would say yes. Had he told me to take up my mat and walk already, I'm not sure.

Maybe it worked because somebody insisted - someone who really cared, who spoke with the authority of her own healing. Hm. I wonder if Jesus could heal and believed in healing because he had experienced his own.