When You’ve Been Trying for Too Long
What Her Story Says to the Woman Running Out of Reach
For the woman who is not giving up - but is running very, very low.
You have a number. Not twelve, maybe. But you have a number.
A length of time this has been going on.
A count of the things you’ve tried.
A tally, somewhere in the back of your mind, of the prayers that went up and the silence that came back.
Of the times you believed something was going to shift and it didn’t.
Of the people who told you to keep the faith and then moved on with their lives while you’re still here, in the same place, still trying.
You are not someone who gives up easily. That’s actually part of what makes this so hard.
You’ve kept going long past the point where most people would have stopped. And somewhere in the keeping going, something has gotten very, very thin.
Not your faith exactly. More like your capacity to keep reaching for it.
There is a woman in Scripture who had a number too, and her story is the most honest thing I know about what God does with the kind of faith that doesn’t look like faith anymore.
Twelve Years
We don’t know her name.
What we know is her number: twelve years.
Twelve years of bleeding that would not stop. In her culture and time, that meant she was considered ceremonially unclean. That meant untouchable, excluded from worship, unable to be physically held by the people she loved.
Not occasionally inconvenient. Twelve years of being cut off from the things that make a life feel whole, and she had spent that twelve years trying to fix it.
The Gospel of Mark says she “had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.”
Read that carefully.
She suffered a great deal under the care of people who were supposed to help her. The trying itself cost her. The people whose job it was to make things better made things worse. She walked away from every attempt poorer than she arrived - in money, in energy, in the dwindling reserves of hope that this time might be different.
Twelve years. Spent everything. Tried everything. Grew worse.
That number is in the Bible on purpose. It’s not a passing detail.
It’s there because God knows what it costs to keep trying when trying has stopped paying off.
It’s there for the woman reading this who has her own version of twelve years and needs to know that her exhaustion is not invisible and her duration is not forgotten.
“Twelve years. That number is in the Bible on purpose. Because God knows what it costs to keep trying when trying has stopped paying off. ”
What She Did Anyway
And then she heard that Jesus was nearby.
She shouldn’t have been in a crowd.
She was unclean, her presence among people was technically prohibited. But she came anyway. She pressed into the crowd from behind, where she was less likely to be noticed, and she reached for the edge of his robe.
Not the whole robe.
The edge.
The hem.
The outermost fringe of what was available to her.
She didn’t announce herself.
She didn’t tap him on the shoulder and make her case.
She didn’t pray the kind of prayer that gets told in testimonies.
She came from behind, hidden, hoping that the smallest possible contact would be enough, because small and hidden was all she had left.
She reached. That’s it. That’s the whole act of faith.
And Jesus stopped.
In the middle of a crowd pressing in from every side, with people touching him and jostling against him and calling for his attention, he stopped.
His disciples thought the question was almost comical: Who touched me?
Everyone was touching him. But he said he felt power go out from him. He felt hers.
The hidden one.
The back-of-the-crowd one.
The one made by a woman who was almost too tired to try one more thing.
That’s the reach he felt differently from all the rest.
The Thing About Running Out of Reach
I want to talk about what it actually feels like to be where she was.
Not just tired.
There is a specific kind of tired that comes from a long struggle that other people’s sympathy has long since stopped covering.
A tired that has a loneliness built into it, because the people who were present and concerned at the beginning have quietly moved on. Not because they stopped caring. Because their lives kept moving and yours got stuck.
You’ve stopped talking about it as much.
Not because it’s gotten better, but because you’ve watched what happens when you bring it up.
The slight shift in people’s faces.
The well-meant things they say that slide right off.
The way you end up reassuring them that you’re okay so they feel better about not being able to fix it.
And underneath all of that, the thing you might not say out loud is this: You’ve started to wonder if your faith is the problem. If there’s something wrong with the way you’re doing this. If people who have a healthier faith or a stronger prayer life or a better relationship with God would have seen something change by now.
That thought is a lie. But it feels very true when you’ve been here a long time.
She had tried everything the healers of her day had to offer.
She had spent everything she had.
She had grown worse.
And she still pressed into that crowd.
Not with great faith. With what she had left, which was almost nothing, aimed at the smallest possible target.
He Stopped for the Hidden Reach
Here is what I want you to understand about that moment.
Jesus didn’t stop for the loudest person in the crowd. He didn’t stop for the most obvious need or the most articulate prayer or the person who had the most faith on display.
He stopped for her.
The one who came from behind.
The one who wasn’t supposed to be there.
The one who reached for the very edge of what was available and hoped it would be enough because she had nothing left to offer that was more impressive than that.
He felt that reach above all the others.
And when she came forward trembling, terrified that she’d been caught, that she’d done something wrong, that she was in trouble, he called her daughter.
Not patient.
Not supplicant.
Not the unclean woman who broke protocol.
Daughter.
He said her faith had healed her.
Her faith. The thin, desperate, back-of-the-crowd, almost-didn’t-try version of faith that she showed up with.
That was enough. It was, apparently, exactly enough.
“He stopped for the hidden reach. The back-of-the-crowd, nothing left, almost didn’t try reach. That’s the one He felt.”
What You Have Left is Enough
I want to say this as directly as I can: You don’t need to have more than you have.
You don’t need to manufacture a faith that feels stronger than it does right now.
You don’t need to figure out what you’re doing wrong or find the thing that will finally make the difference.
You don’t need to push through with great conviction or loud declarations or the kind of confidence that other people’s testimonies are full of.
You need to reach. That’s it.
Whatever reaching looks like for you right now, maybe it’s reading this.
Maybe it’s still praying even when prayer has stopped feeling like it reaches anything.
Maybe it’s getting up and going through the motions of faith when the motions have gone cold.
Maybe it’s just still being here, still not having given up, still carrying the thing and the question and the exhaustion of twelve years of trying.
He feels that reach.
He stops for it.
Not after you’ve gathered enough strength to make it more impressive. Right now, with what you have, in the form it currently takes.
The woman who reached for the hem of his robe got the same response as everyone else he healed. There’s no record of him noting that her faith could have been stronger. He called her daughter and told her she was free from her suffering.
What you have left is enough to reach with, and He is already moving toward you.
A Question to Sit With
Before you go, one question to carry:
What does your reach look like right now, the actual one, not the one you think it should be? And what would it mean to trust that that reach is enough?
Just sit with that. You don’t have to produce anything else today.
If her story felt close to yours today, if you recognized yourself in the woman who has been trying for too long and is running very low, I made something for you. It’s a two-minute quiz that helps you find out which woman of the Bible mirrors where you are right now. Your result comes with a personal reflection written just for that place. It’s free, and it might meet you exactly where you are.→ Take the quiz: Which Woman of the Bible Are You Right Now? If this resonated, you might also find these helpful:→ [LINK TO NAOMI POST] — When grief changes who you are
→ [LINK TO MARY OF BETHANY POST] — When you’re angry at God for not coming sooner
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