She’s 68 years old and has been struggling with her illness for 17 years . . .

I’ll call her Sally.

She makes me think of the woman who was hemorrhaging in Matthew 9. She has definitely been taken advantage of by the medical system — they’ve stripped her of every single dime, her dignity and her self-esteem. People like her make you wish for a justice system that makes her tormentors have to endure what she has had to endure.

Sally first called me, long distance, on the verge of suicide. A friend of a friend had given her my name. She was desperate — she was in unbearable pain, chronically hurting, for almost 17 years. Her “favorite” expression is that “my brain is on fire and worms are crawling around in my head.” Imagine that for 17 years! The day she talked with me for the first time, she was sitting in her den with a revolver in her lap. Her question to me was: “Is there a reason to continue to endure this? Give me one reason! I need hope — I do not care to wake one more day like this.”

That begin our five month journey to this point.

I’ve talked with her every 7-14 days since then. I honestly expected someone else to pick the phone up at some point and give me the words that Sally is dead. But she has continue to answer.

She tells me that the only reason she is still alive is that my words give her hope. I don’t know about you, but I find that incredible. Who am I that my words keep someone from blowing their brains out because of intense pain? What do they convey to her that she is willing to endure, at least another week? I readily admit that there are times when I’m on the verge of tears in frustration and fear — what if I say the wrong thing?

From day one I’ve told her that I can’t help her if she doesn’t bring the Jesus Lord into the equation. I started her reading the gospel of John; five months later she’s still reading. Five months later she still asks me the same question several times in every conversation: “Is there anything in me worth saving?”

Today she told me that for the first time in five months that she has seen a change in her pain, an improvement. She was almost giddy. Her words: “Dr. Joe, the worms are still crawling in my head and the burn is still there. I hurt so bad that I cry most of the day. But, something has changed. The pain has gone down. Is that good?”

Yes, Sally, it is very good. I hung up for the first time with an optimism I’ve not experienced with her. [Lord, please hear my pleading for this woman.] 

How many Sallys are there out there — alone, in pain, ready to cash in all her chips? How are we as the body of Christ reaching out to them? Are we? Are we making a difference in the community, in the world? Are we content to put on our Easter pageants, sit in our cushioned pews, feel good on Sundays and pat ourselves on the back, declaring that we’re good folks serving a good God?

Sally begs us to not “feel good about ourselves.” She desperately needs us to be uncomfortable, to move out of our feel-good-about-ourselves-and-know-how-to-control-the-situation lives. She needs us to care, and act, so that she might live.

I guess the question is, do we?