Woman, Why Are You Weeping?

You never anticipate your own body to be used as a weapon against you. Such a brash way to describe assault. In my eyes, it is still easier to say the above than to say “assault”. I don’t mean to beautify the ugly. I don’t mean to use poetics to diminish a suffering I, and many others, have endured. I am simply on a journey of healing, and along this journey, I fluctuate between calling violation as it is and shying away from its gruesome reality.

The Me Too movement has given voice to those who thought themselves voiceless. It has shed light on the evil and the sin that runs rampant in many industries, including the one I hold most dear: entertainment. Every year, posts on all platforms raise awareness to the number of just how many people have suffered a sexual violation or trauma. It is sickening, eye opening, and heart wrenching.

Yet, the era of Me Too made it harder for me to admit the trauma I faced. I feared appearing like another trend. I did not want to become just another hashtag. I wanted to be seen by people who truly love me, not coddled by a generation that thinks an Instagram comment can heal wounds.

I simply never thought it possible, even with the Me Too movement, to allow myself to use my own voice. My voice was my own hindrance. This was only exacerbated by the terrible stigma we title attention seeking, so I kept to myself. I never joined the movement I rightfully could join. Additionally, what was perhaps the most significant hindrance was my own denial.

I spent years unaware of the relationship between my anxiety and the month I spent as a victim of stalking in high school. Add another stalker in college, a molestation I excused, and harassment and a threat to my life, then anxious spiraling and paranoia suddenly became the least of my symptoms.

I accused the lonesome adaptation to college life for my depression. Anxiety was a part of growing up. I did not understand the abnormality of my own paranoia. Driving in circles to ensure no car was truly following behind was normal. Running home at the sound of a branch breaking was common. The late nights, desperate calls on God, inability to be alone, insecurity in spaces that should have felt safe, and break downs beneath a bed in a dorm room were daily occurrences. Yet, none of this had a name.

Until after four years of suffering, a trip to the hospital made visible an invisible parasite. This parasite was the manifestation of the men who hurt me, living on within my brain. This disease has a name.

Post-traumatic stress disorder.

I had naturally suspected that I suffered with post-traumatic stress as early as my freshman year of college, which was only one year after having first been stalked in high school. Henceforth, I couldn’t navigate the streets where it all happened alone. Driving sent me into anxious fits. For years, if another car took the same turn as me, I thought I was being followed.

Even still, post-traumatic stress disorder was preserved in my mind for the people who endured “real trauma”. War veterans and sexual assault victims. It was, after all of the other traumas that followed in only three years time, on the anniversary of my assault, that my body involuntarily caved to the weight of persistent trauma.

I made it to my dorm after an evening of prayer, laughter, and music, only to collapse to the floor. I believed I was suffering nothing short of a heart attack. My body seized and spazzed, my breath escaped me. I had to be carried to the car which then brought me to the hospital.

EKG. No heart attack. Blood tests. No heart disease. X-Ray. No breaks or fractures. Exhaled nitric oxide test. Not my asthma. What had attacked my body seemed unidentifiable. It was in my head - an anxiety attack at best.

Only one week passed, and I was suffering another two in one night. Racking my brain, it hit me that these attacks were happening with very specific triggers. These triggers all directly correlated to traumatic events of my recent past. In the worst of the episodes, I would even phase out. I could not remember where I was, and my brain would return to a time before I was ever hurt. On one occasion, I told a high school friend that I was seventeen. I was twenty two.

Like the depression I freed myself from only years prior and the anxiety I still battled, post-traumatic stress disorder became a very real disease I had to overcome. Thus, I turned to the one person I had learned could truly heal me: our God.

We are both body and soul. We are spiritual and corporal beings. Our bodies will die. Our souls will live on. The experiences of our bodies inform the identities of our souls. We cannot heal our souls with medical doctors, and we cannot heal our bones with prayer alone. Finding a good counselor was a step towards healing. However, it was not my only step, and for my journey particularly, it was not the most crucial.

I searched in good places for healing when I was battling depression and anxiety. They were successful even, in that they provided stepping stones to recovery. Exercising daily, eating healthily, extending beyond my comfort zone socially, joining student organizations - all of the ways I became more active as a person and within my community provided for a healthier lifestyle, which ultimately led to a healthier mind. Yet, true healing came as I dove deeper into faith.

Faith can seem so abstract. It was not the concept of faith I dove into. It was the source and summit of faith that I latched onto, held to tightly, and fell in love with. Jesus became my healing. He was, is, and always will be our saving grace, our hero, our victory over sin. He is my victory over the sins of the men who hurt me, and over my sins of withholding forgiveness, begrudging, and despair.

The Christian community has long encouraged turning to God in times of need, in times of suffering or loss. Yet, I found a significant unawareness, or even resistance, to the healing power of God’s love in so many secular communities. This was evidenced by the lack of advice I received from these communities to turn to religion in the times I suffered. It was as if the profound healing I and many others in the faith had experienced was kept secret from the world. No one knew it possible to look there, so why would they suggest it to me?

It would take a novel to detail all of the ways that the Lord continues to work in my life. Right now, Jesus and I are working on opening my heart to His healing hands. Healing comes only when we want it, as I am learning. However, what I can detail is this: no one ever told me to look to Jesus. All of my answers came from where no one told me to look, so I’m here to tell you, look there!

Look to Jesus!

The story that comes to mind to encourage you to do so is one right after the Resurrection of Christ. A woman, named Mary of Magdala, was the first to discover the empty sepulcher where Jesus had been laid after His death.

She immediately runs to Peter and the other apostles, begging them to follow and investigate what she has seen. When she returns with Peter and John, she falls and weeps while they enter the tomb to look for the Lord. Angels appear and ask Mary of Magdala why she is crying. As she responds to inform them of her fears about the whereabouts of the body of her beloved God, a man behind calls to her and asks her the same thing.

“‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?’” (John 20:15)

This man is indeed the risen Christ.

What is initially incredible about this line is that Jesus refers to Mary of Magdala the same way He refers to His mother at the wedding at Cana. “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” (John 2:4). It can seem in our modern vernacular a disrespectful way to address one’s mother or even another woman. However, many biblical scholars seem to agree that in coming from the Lord, it is an address filled with nothing less than reverence.

We have no identity other than sons and daughters of God. You are not what you eat. You are not who you associate with or how much money you earn. You are not where you are from. You are not your experiences or your accomplishments. You are only a daughter or son of the risen King. A princess or prince in the Holy Kingdom, by right of your creation. The Lord sees woman and man. It is that simple for Him.

I believe on the few occasions we witness Jesus refer to a woman as “Woman” in the Gospels, that those are also the occasions we see more clearly His divine nature. Jesus is both God and man, and in those moments, His divinity shines forth more distinctly. He is seeing and calling to His daughters.

Thus, in the moment that He calls to Mary of Magdala and says, “Woman, why are you weeping?”, He is essentially asking, “My daughter, why are you crying?” He does not distinguish us. He cares for all equally.

This line inspires healing in me in that it reminds me of my identity as linked to the one true God. I am a daughter of the King. How empowering is that! I am a woman. I am strong and worthy of love. His love.

It continues to become more intriguing. Jesus knows all, and He knows very well why Mary of Magdala is weeping. But, He places the will for Mary to ask for His aid into her own hands. The power is given to Mary to not only accept, but to ask for Jesus’ assistance in her moment of distress. He believes she is capable. He never forces us to give more than we are able.

Then, in the next line, we are reminded of where our attention should be in times of suffering. “Whom are you looking for?”

Mary of Magdala honestly responds to say she is looking for Jesus. Alas, she does not even recognize that she is in fact talking to Jesus Himself! “She thought it was the gardener and said to him, ‘Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.’” (John 20:15)

Her attention is on her loss, so she does not realize whom she has found. How often is this what happens with us? We become so absorbed in the woes of our lives, that we lose sight of Jesus working in them, even if the result is right in front of our eyes. To me, this line is a reminder to be more grateful for the blessings He has given me, and to humble myself to recognize where God always works, even if I can’t see it with my fickle, human eyes.

Lastly, it is at this moment that Jesus responds evermore gently than the first time. He reveals Himself to Mary of Magdala in calling her by name. “Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher.” (John 20:16)

It is in this moment that Mary of Magdala finally recognizes Jesus.

Jesus will continue to fight for us. By calling Mary of Magdala by her name, He revealed Himself to her in the way she exactly needed Him to — in the way she could understand Him. That is how He works in all of our lives. He calls us by our names. He reveals Himself in the ways we need Him to, and He will continue to do so until we recognize Him.

“Woman, why are you weeping?” is the line in Scripture that reveals these mysteries to me — I am a woman and a daughter of God, I am worthy of His love, I am meant to keep my eyes on Him, and when I fail at this, Jesus will chase me until I finally look up. This is a line of hope. Jesus is my hope. Jesus is my healing.

To think no one ever told me to turn to Him. It is by His grace alone that I finally had. God is always working in our lives. He is always fighting for us. We just have to let Him. “Woman, why are you weeping?” is a gentle reminder that in the hope of Christ, perhaps we have no reason to weep at all.