Does God Heal Women?

“Her brother Absalom said to her, ‘Has that Amnon, your brother, been with you?  Be quiet now, my sister; he is your brother.  Don’t take this thing to heart.’  And Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman.”

2 Samuel 13:20

A few weeks ago I watched a re-run of the original Law & Order.  A woman killed the man who raped her.  Law & Order prompted me to pick up the Bible and see how God comforted and restored rape victims.

I couldn’t find anything.  There are stories of rape in the Bible.  There are stories of women being healed of diseases.  Yet, I couldn’t find a story of a woman who received justice and healing from rape.  Tamar’s story ends with her living as a desolate woman.  I mentioned in a previous post that sometimes the Bible is hard for a woman to read, because sometimes it appears as though God doesn’t care as much about women.  That little seed of doubt in my mind started growing again.

Then I saw Before: An Evening of Original Monologues, written by young women who were sexually exploited and prostituted.    Prior to the show’s start, I bought a book by the organization’s founder, who was also exploited as a young woman.  The back cover says, “With time, through incredible resilience, and with the help of a local church community, she finally broke free of her pimp and her past . . . .”  When seated, I noticed the show’s cast praying before their performance. They opened the show with a trio of survivors singing a song called “Happy Being Me”.  During the show a few women talked about prayer getting them through.  I don’t know GEMS to be a Christian organization, but it appears that there are Christians in it.

Maybe God was using Before to address my doubts.  I was suddenly surrounded by women who talked about what horror that they’d been though, and that they’re now fine.  Their message is just that they want to prevent other girls from going through something they’ll need a healing from.  One day later, I was in a completely different context, and heard two female acquaintances mention that they were incest survivors.  They still struggle, but they’re also engaged in life.

If that’s God’s answer to me, I’ll take it.

“Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing”

Exodus 15:20