Reflections in the Healing Pool

     One Saturday I decided to catch up with a good friend. Over lunch she confided in me her struggle with taking prescribed medication to correct a chemical imbalance she had been diagnosed with by a psychiatrist. I listened with a sympathetic ear until she said that she anticipated the departure of her depression as that of having to “say good-bye to an old friend.”

     “An old friend!” I gasped, incredulous. The uncomfortable silence that followed made me regret my instant rush to judgement. I didn’t know how Christ would have responded, but my friend’s downcast eyes made me want to understand.

     Later, at home, I searched healing Scriptures in the Bible and found myself in John, Chapter Five and “The Healing Pool.”

     Reading about the only instance in the New Testament in which Jesus asks someone if they wanted to get well, I felt convicting goosebumps rise on my arms. Unexpectedly, the Holy Spirit began showing me about my own resistance to healing.

     The paralytic answers Jesus’ question by focusing not on the hope before him, but on the obstacles faced during thirty-eight long years watching others get results. (If indeed there was a stirring of the pool that healed people). Sadly, I realized the power I have given to obstacles in my own life over God’s great ability to heal. If I had set my sights on the One Who heals rather than my emotions, it could have taken a lot less time for the Holy Spirit to renew and restore me for service to the Lord.

     Instead, I saw that I was responsible for time ill spent by hiding behind the “comparison barrier” I had built before the Lord. I thwarted the Lord’s healing attempts by looking at others growing in their faith and in ministry by telling myself things like, “God must love her more,” or “He can take care of that, he’s got greater gifts,” or “She’s a better Christian than me…”

     Patiently the Holy Spirit revealed to me that the first step on a healing journey requires surrender of those obstacles that are unique to us as individuals, yet universal in their result of raising a barrier to God’s divine touch in our lives. Gently, Jesus had pried open my white-knuckled fingers that had clutched to the “old self.” As if I were an onion, he was peeling away layer after layer of my inner “soulish” woman to reveal at my core the close companionship of my own friends—negativity and pride. I had bouts of entertaining them with either brooding or making mental lists of how I could be more righteous before God. The truth is emotions lie and we cannot sanctify ourselves. 1 Thessalonians 5:24 says, “The One who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” Not us, but Him in us. We are already made righteous before God when we accept Christ.

     I thought of that paralytic lying beside the pool for more than a generation, possibly nursing resentment, frustration and sorrow. Maybe he gave up all hope and desire to help himself until all these things bloomed into a kind of safe and familiar pain. He tells Jesus in verse 7: “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.” No one? It’s difficult to imagine that thirty-eight years brought with them no one person willing to assist this lame man in an effort to be given the ability to walk again. If I were in his position, I could see myself begging others to drag me right up to the edge of that pool before it stirred, rather than recline under a colonnade.

     But then, this illustration may demonstrate humankind’s tendency to withdraw into the predictability of suffering rather than risk leaping into healing pools at a price.

     There is a cost to being made well. We’re not made well just to enjoy healing, though that’s part of it. We’re made well to be vocal in praise and thanksgiving, to tell others about miracles in our lives and minister healing to them. The paralytic was given working legs and feet to do it.

     But when the paralytic is confronted about who healed him, he has no idea. Didn’t he want to know? Wouldn’t he have wanted to run, with renewed legs, to find his healer, to shout out to others the amazing thing that had just happened to him?

     When Jesus re-encounters the man the next day, He says to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (John 5:14). This is a shocking statement never said to anyone else in the Scriptures from a merciful and compassionate Lord. Was the man’s paralysis the result of some sin in his life? We just don’t know. But maybe, our divine Healer was demonstrating that we are to speak our testimony about Jesus to others. It is the message we are urged to spread among a hurting and fallen world. The very next verse says, “Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus Who had healed him.

     I next made the important decision to be part of Jesus’ healing ministry by calling my friend and telling her I knew just what she had meant that day, by sharing what the Holy Spirit had revealed to me.

Discussion Questions

Are there any obstacles in your life that create a barrier between you and God?

Do you entertain any “friends” because they are predictable and comfortable?

Do you regularly share with others about God healing you of old wounds and transforming your life?

Closing prayer

Father God, thank you for your Holy Spirit Who makes us aware of obstacles and barriers we put up against wholeness found through you. We ask you for the deep healing and transformation only You can do in us, and a willingness to share our victories through you. “We are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

     Finally, John waves me over. They’re ready to see us in one of the offices in the back of the building. Relief surges through me. It’s tough to see all these babies while having a body that just refuses to conceive. I don’t want to imagine that any of them are unwanted, resented or not provided for properly.      

     Children’s wailing echoes in the hallways as I follow John. Expressionless women avoid eye contact as they hurriedly pass us by. Though their faces give no clue as to why they are here, nobody seems particularly happy to be where they are. Except for my husband and me. We’re really quite heartened and eager to have yet one more step of the adoption journey about to be completed. 

    After our blood is drawn, we’re ushered into an office to wait in chairs facing a desk that takes up about half the miniscule room. On the wall behind the desk there are at least a dozen children’s drawings. Many of the pictures are made out to a “Bob” who we have yet to meet.

     Around ten minutes later he greets us in his office and tells us the HIV test is accompanied by both a sexual questionnaire and counseling. I can’t quite believe what I am hearing. 

     I can feel myself flush with annoyance when Bob asks, “How many sexual partners have you had, and do you currently have?” Ridiculously he next asks us, “How many times have you had unprotected sex?”

     Bob treats us like we’re some kind of promiscuous swingers instead of a married, committed Christian couple trying to adopt a baby. I can’t understand why this line of questioning is necessary for adoption. Either Bob didn’t get the memo or it’s because the Department of Health is government run with inane bureaucratic protocols.   

     Nobody, but nobody has to complete a lengthy sexual questionnaire in order to conceive a child! This is a tad more than violating. But I’m fearful too. Should I protest to any of these requirements, someone may be able to squash our adoption plans. Worse than all of this invasiveness however, is what Bob does after the “counseling” on safe sex practices. He stands up and grabs something from his desk drawer.

     “Our parting gift,” he says, and hands me…a condom.

     Gift? I’m too stunned to say anything. As he hands me the square, plastic package, I don’t know whether to laugh or fling it back at old Bob in disgust at the utter insensitivity and irony of being handed a contraceptive device. I’m already feeling emotionally battered and bruised from all that has gotten me here in the first place. There was last year’s failed fertility intervention. Then, there was the foster care option that I hoped would produce a baby that turned into pressure to take on a near grown teen. And now, we’re still in the thick of adoption requirements. I have felt longing, envy, sadness, impatience and self-condemnation for being childless in the first place. Both John and I have been subjected to endless interrogation and introspection. Now, to top it all off, I get to go home with a free condom—yippee!

    As John and I walk out into the near empty parking lot, we see only one other car, parked several yards away from ours. It’s a beat up, early model, dingy, white-colored Chevy Impala with its windows wide open. It’s unusual these days to see a car with its windows rolled down. But then I notice something moving inside. Actually, it’s not a something, but a someone—two someones!

     Inside the battered old car on the front, passenger seat is a boy of about two years old. Behind him, strapped into a car seat is an infant. The little boy watches us. I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing. There isn’t an adult in sight. My initial, gut reaction is one of concern for these two babies left alone in a parked car. But I’m also angry, feeling subjected to two offending situations within the space of a minutes. After all we are going through, it just burns me up to know that people are so irresponsible as to leave babies alone in a car.      

      Frozen, I can do nothing for a few seconds, but stare intently at these children, wondering what God would have me to do. I begin griping to John about the obviously horrible parents these kids have, ending my monologue with, “And people like us can’t have babies, honestly!” But I don’t squeal on the parent or parents. Two women head for the car. The children become animated with familiarity.

It is the contention of some well-meaning individuals that the best way to protect the rights of frozen embryos is to allow parents to determine their fates. This might include binding contracts that are drawn up by both parties before IVF attempts.

Says Robyn Shapiro, a Milwaukee lawyer specializing in reproductive issues, “Just as the courts have acknowledged that parents are ordinarily the proper decision makers for their children’s welfare, the embryos’ best interests are maximally protected if gamete (sperm and egg) providers maintain decision making authority over their fate.” 

But isn’t it true that in many instances, parents do not always do what is best for their children’s welfare? And is it not further the case that fifty percent of the couples in this country divorce? When couples divorce, children often become pawns used by their parents to gain control over one another in various ways. In a more nonchalant manner, frozen embryos can be used for one partner to wage financial, emotional or psychological warfare over the other. Then, in other cases there is a stalemate in which no one makes a move to do anything to protect frozen embryos from the ticking of the clock. This is particularly the case for couples who have never been in agreement as to how they view that which they have made together in the first place. Are they persons or possessions? In addition, a very real oversight of Shapiro’s is the fact that divorcing couples lose love for one another. It only stands to reason that as that happens, so too, would one or both tend to lose feelings of attachment for low-maintenance frozen embryos they once had hopes of raising into children with that former loved one.

It seems a twisted irony that while the United States spends billions of dollars annually to prevent and abort unwanted pregnancies, this country spends billions more to provide the technological means for producing babies for those who want them. In fact, we spend more in reproductive technological and surgical intervention than any other country. 

Author David Schenk says that if there is one lesson he has learned from the history of technology, it is, “If it can be done, it will be done.” One wonders if Schenk was considering pre-technological lessons as well, such as the one learned through the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. At this early point in civilization, God said that there would be nothing beyond man’s ability to do if man shared a common language. He therefore confused man’s speech and scattered him. For those of us approaching the twenty-first century, we have overcome barriers to global communication. Are we possibly approaching another era in history in which God once more curtails man’s soaring to reach new heights; this time as man builds his genetic monument to himself?

Technology is not in and of itself a bad thing. Says Roberge, “There is no morality with science or technology. These things are amoral as they exist, but rather it’s what’s done with them.” Forty-one year old Mallory Albens, attempting to conceive for more than two years doesn’t see IVF as something she and her husband would pursue. She does however, suspend judgment for other Christian couples who do, conceding that God Himself may lead them on this path. She believes that one way for the Christian couple to avoid playing God “is for only as many embryos that are going to be implanted to be made.” Albens says Christians should take direction from the Bible. “Psalm 139 says that God knows us from the time we are in our mothers’ wombs. His Word says, ‘Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.' I would think that the moment of conception would be the moment when one received everything from God, including His Spirit, based on that scripture.”

There is no getting around the fact that many of those busy at work unraveling our great genetic map are those without qualms about treading on God’s sovereignty. Says scientist Francis Crick, who along with James Watson discovered the structure of DNA, “A modern neuroscientist has no need for the religious concept of a soul to explain the behavior of humans and other animals.” He confidently speaks for his colleagues when he asserts, “Not all neuroscientists believe the concept of the soul is a myth, but certainly the majority do.” And one neuropsychologist who studies prayer adds this observation, “Most of my colleagues see religion as a sort of pathological state.” Not only may we see a day when frozen embryos are routinely tested for potential physical or psychological impairments, but perhaps spiritual ones as well.

And who is to decide? As my fingers hit the keyboard, researchers are attempting to hit upon a gene responsible for spirituality. Imagine a day not far off when parents may be able to “faith-select” their offspring just as they are currently able to “sex-select” them now. Remember, we live are living in an era where cloning is a reality, as well as posthumous reproduction, giving a child two biological mothers by using different parts of individual eggs to form one egg, growing human tissue independent of a human and, perhaps shortly, the artificial womb.

And there are plenty of frozen embryos to study. In this country, despite widely held belief, it isn’t illegal to specifically create embryos for research. The congressional ban simply means that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest government source of money and scientific research standards can’t fund or control any embryo studies. Lawrence Roberge worries about Christians pursuing IVF without adequate information in making their decisions. That embryo development isn’t completely arrested with freezing, he points out, may be a little known fact. This has led to uncertainty as to how long embryos can be safely frozen. In Great Britain, thousands of frozen embryos were destroyed when that country enacted a five-year limit on their storage. In this country, the oldest frozen embryo to result in a live birth surpassing this limit was six years old. Yet who is to regulate experimentation on even older frozen embryos?

“Christians need to be much more involved,” says Cameron. “According to scripture, we are called to be salt and light without compromise.” Besides pushing aside the fear of what may happen to us professionally or personally with a non-compromising attitude, we need to be more aware of what is happening in reproductive technologies. Just as the secular world views “Knowledge as power,” Christians need to believe in acquiring enough knowledge to allow God something to give power to, such as getting across the ethical concerns of IVF. As Roberge has stated, Christians need more information before undertaking any IVF procedures. As an example of what he believes to be a lack of public education in general, Roberge says, “There are Christians and pro life organizations against abortion, but not necessarily against birth control, without realizing that many birth control methods actually work to abort rather than simply to prevent pregnancy.”

Albens thinks that Christians probably can have more control than they think with IVF. “And if you can’t have that control by telling your doctor that you refuse to have embryos frozen, then, as a Christian maybe you don’t want to pursue IVF.” In the meantime, Albens is patiently waiting on the Lord, sure that God is leading her through a process that involves, “Waiting, trusting and learning…His Word says we have to go through things in order to experience His compassion so that we might have compassion for others. I don’t know how God is going to provide, but my prayer is that He keeps my arms full and my hope alive.” While she spiritually grows in the process, she is focusing on enjoying other people’s children.