The Power To Endure

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. – Mark 5:25-26 
 
According to one scholar, there were over 30 different treatments for women with her condition. Assuming she had tried all 30 of them from other doctors, this treatment offered by Jesus would have been her 31st procedure in 12 years; for her to get to this point, she had to learn to endure.  
 
Verse 26 says, “she had endured much.” Endurance is the capacity to go through something difficult and not let that situation get the best of you. What inspires me, and what I hope inspires you, about this woman is that she did not allow her pain or her disappointment to defeat her.  
 
For 12 years she endured this bleeding issue. If you do the math, 12 years is 144 months, 624 weeks, 4,383 days, and just over 105,000 hours. And after all that, she did not fall apart when the thing she wanted did not work out the way she desired.  
 
The Bible tells us that she had suffered many things by many doctors and yet, rather than her condition getting better, it got worse. But it appears that the deterioration of her condition did not translate into the destruction of her faith. Her condition may have gotten worse, but her faith got stronger.  
 
Twelve years is a long time to have to deal with a problem. It's a long time to be sick, heartbroken, unemployed or trapped in an unproductive space. Some people can't handle a challenge 12 days let alone 12 years. Long-term suffering can wear you down and wear you out. You would have thought that after 12 years she would have given up, concluded it wasn’t going to happen, but she doesn’t do that. She made the most of it by not allowing the setback to set her back. She decided that what didn’t kill her could be used to make her stronger. And by not giving up and choosing to endure, she was able to see the Lord’s faithfulness and experience His goodness she never would have seen if she had given up.