When Hurting Is Easier Than Healing — Carol McLeod Ministries
“So, what brought you here today?”
I was a therapist trainee at a counseling center for one of the largest churches in America, and my caseload was rife with unhappy couples, struggling teens, weary singles, and people with bouts of depression and anxiety everywhere else in between.
Sobered by the amount of pain the people in the pews were experiencing, I found a special appreciation for the clinical intake process that would begin over the phone and continue during our first session. During these initial touch points, I’d get the opportunity to ask questions regarding the client’s personal history, family history, current concerns, and their overall life situation. It was my job to help those newly in my care to develop goals and a plan of action for their therapy sessions.
And the context for their concerns always made the difference. To my satisfaction, new clients had no problems diving into the details. They could easily tell me how many sleepless nights they’d had over the past week, how many times they had to call their spouses before they reached them, their increasing suspicions and eroding trust, the number of years they had suffered in turmoil, and the exact moment they had given up all hope for a change in their life.
The level of detail was unsurprising. By the time you’ve made it into a therapist’s office, your pain has reached a point you can no longer ignore. What was surprising, however, was how often the mood in the room shifted about midway through our fifty- minute session.
“Now, what would you like to see changed?”
When I asked my clients about their hopes for the future, the room would grow quieter. The words would come slower. Couples would make their answers entirely about the other person. The confidence and great detail with which they would speak about their problems would fade. It was as if rehearsing pain had become easier for them than imagining new possibilities. Like recounting hurt was more accessible than envisioning health.
And there I sat, wondering if I was looking in a mirror. How much did I, too, trust my pain more than anything else?
In John 5:1–9, we learn that Jesus also had to deal with people more familiar with their hurting than their healing. During a Jewish festival one day, Jesus went up to a pool in Jerusalem named Bethesda, where many sick people lay across porches. It was known to them that at certain yet unpredictable times, an angel of the Lord would descend on that pool and stir up the water, and whoever jumped into the pool first at this time would be healed of their ailments.
Besides the fact that finding a healing pool of water to jump into sounds really good right now, I’ve always been struck by the tiny little conversation Jesus had with one of the porch dwellers.
He was a man who could not walk and had been there on the porch for thirty-eight years.
John 5:6 tells us that when Jesus saw him lying there, knowing he’d been there a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” To note, the original Greek word used for well here, hygiēs, can be translated as “sound” or “whole.” Jesus was asking this man if he wanted to be made whole.
“Without question!” the man said. Well, it’s what I thought he would say given he’d been there, in the same condition, for thirty-eight years. It’s what I hope I’d say if I was the one sick for thirty-eight years. Broken for thirty-eight years. Worn down for thirty-eight years, fighting for the health of my mind and body and the manifestation of God’s promises and prophecies in my life.
But the man did not respond like this. And something tells me I may not have either. In fact, I might’ve responded quite similarly to what the man said to Jesus instead: “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I’m trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me” (v. 7).
The man skips the question. The man doubles down on how hard it’s been for him. At the brink of his healing, at the bridge to his breakthrough, the man withholds his yes.
After thirty-eight years. Hurting is easier than healing.
Fortunately, in what seemed like a show of God’s mercy (and a bit of psychoanalysis, if you ask me!), Jesus heals the man on the spot, telling him to rise up and walk, and the man is able to do exactly as Jesus says.
Acceptance, recognition, and esteem can be experienced as a form of love. They are at least love- adjacent. But you’ve grown tired from knocking on doors that won’t open. You’re exhausted by the rat race. You feel yourself giving up not because God told you to but because your efforts have beaten you down to a pulp.
Whatever your story, it all feels like the same thing: rejection. And over time, rejection stops feeling like something you experience and instead feels like a core part of who you are.
Rejected seeps into your self- narrative, shaping the way you see the world and casting its shadow over every corner of your life.
I’m not here to minimize any of this. To do so would be a betrayal to my work. I’ve spent too much time listening to the stories of friends, loved ones, students, and clients to pretend these wounds don’t leave a mark. The pain of heartbreak and rejection can carve deep grooves into how we see ourselves, what we believe is still possible, and what we think we deserve.
I honor all of this here.
But I also want to draw your attention to how easy it is, after being in pain for so long, to lose hope. To forget the promise. To miss the moment that God has chosen to change your situation forever. To fail to respond well when he asks you, “Do you want to be made whole?”
Because just as he did with the porch dweller, God wants to heal your heart, your life, and your story. He wants to restore peace to your mind and any other area in your life where you feel doubt, discouragement, and even despair. But when it is your moment— when he wades through your waters and meets you at your porch— will you say yes to him?
