Haven Hearts Bible Study - Week 1 -When Your Issues Become Your Identity
When Your Issues Become Your Identity
Haven Hearts Bible Study – Week 1
Being Known For Your Issues
When Your Issues Become Your Identity
“A woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors… When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak, because she thought, `If I just touch His clothes, I will be healed. Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”
Mark 5:25–29 (NIV)
Introduction: Being Known for Your Issues
Some wounds do not bleed on the outside, yet they never stop draining life on the inside. Many women carry pain that lives beneath the surface, in memories that resurface without warning, in reactions they do not fully understand, and in patterns they never consciously chose. Scripture gives language to this reality long before psychology ever named it.
Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”
When hope is deferred long enough, the heart does not just ache. It adapts. It begins to live differently.
Trauma has a way of branding a woman. Shame has a way of renaming her. Pain, when it goes on long enough, begins to feel like the truest thing about her story. Many women recognize this moment quietly. They may not have words for it, but they feel it. They realize that what happened to them has begun to shape how they see themselves.
For twelve long years, the woman in Mark 5 was known only by one thing. Scripture does not tell us her name. It does not tell us who loved her, what she dreamed of, or what she had lost along the way. It tells us her issue. She is remembered by what hurt her.
That alone should cause us to pause.
How often are women remembered for what broke them instead of who they are?
The longer she bled, the smaller her world became. According to Levitical law, her condition rendered her ceremonially unclean. This meant isolation from worship, from community, and from physical connection. She lived with the constant knowledge that her presence complicated things. Over time, isolation does something dangerous. It convinces a person that they are the problem.
Many women reading this recognize that feeling. Not because of physical bleeding, but because trauma has made them feel like their pain takes up too much space.
But Jesus saw her.
Mark 5 tells us that Jesus felt power leave Him the moment she touched His cloak. Before anyone else noticed her presence, He noticed her faith. He stopped an entire crowd for one woman who had learned not to be seen.
And when He spoke to her later in the passage, He did not call her “unclean.”
He did not call her “broken.”
He did not call her “the woman with the issue.”
He called her Daughter.
That single word rewrote twelve years of identity.
This Bible study is for women who know what it feels like to be defined by what wounded them. It is for women who carry trauma quietly, who learned early how to survive dysfunction, and who may not yet realize that what they endured was not normal, even if it was familiar.
Psalm 139:1–2 reminds us, “You have searched me, Lord, and You know me… You perceive my thoughts from afar.”
Jesus does not meet women at the surface. He meets them where the story began.
Teaching: When Issues Become Identity
There is a kind of pain that outlasts strength. It does not come and go. It stays. Over time, it stops feeling like something a woman has and starts feeling like something she is.
The woman in this passage woke up every day for twelve years knowing she would bleed again. Twelve years of exhaustion. Twelve years of disappointment. Twelve years of hoping that the next attempt might finally be the one that works.
Mark 5:26 tells us she “had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had...” Not only was she physically depleted, she was emotionally and financially drained. Many women recognize this pattern. They have tried everything they know to try. Counseling. Relationships. Avoidance. Self-improvement. Silence.
Over time, her issue became her name.
Scripture never records anyone asking her how she was doing. It records her condition. This matters because long-term pain does not just affect the body. It affects identity.
Psychology explains that when trauma is ongoing, especially when it begins early in life, the brain adapts for survival. The nervous system learns to expect danger. The mind learns to scan for threat. The body holds tension. Over time, these adaptations feel like personality, but they are actually responses.
Jesus never mistakes adaptation for identity.
Isaiah 42:3 says, “A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out.”
Jesus does not come to finish off what trauma started. He comes to restore what trauma distorted.
Many women today live inside the same quiet prison this woman lived in. Their wounds may not be physical, but they bleed into daily life:
Abuse that fractures trust.
Abandonment that shapes attachment.
Domestic violence that rewires survival.
Depression that dulls hope.
Anxiety that isolates.
Generational dysfunction that normalizes chaos.
Issues begin to feel like labels. Labels begin to feel like truth.
But Scripture tells us otherwise.
Isaiah 43:1 declares, “I have summoned you by name; you are Mine.”
Identity does not come from pain. It comes from the One who names.
A Hidden Reach
In her exhaustion and isolation, the woman makes one small, trembling decision. She reaches for Jesus.
Mark tells us she came up behind Him. That detail matters. She did not announce herself. She did not draw attention. Shame rarely does. Shame whispers that invisibility is safer.
Many women understand this moment deeply. They do not feel capable of bold faith. They feel capable of one small reach. One quiet prayer. One hesitant step toward help.
Psychology recognizes this as a moment of agency returning after long helplessness. Faith recognizes it as courage.
Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Faith does not have to be loud. It has to be real.
She touches His cloak, and immediately the bleeding stops. But Jesus does not let the moment pass. He stops and asks, “Who touched Me?”
This is not because He lacks knowledge. It is because He knows she needs more than healing. She needs restoration.
Identity Begins to Shift
When Jesus turns toward her later in the passage and calls her Daughter, something irreversible happens. Identity is restored.
Daughter means belonging.
Daughter means safety.
Daughter means inheritance.
Romans 8:15 says, “…The Spirit you received brought about your adoption… And by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”
Jesus restores family where trauma created exile.
Psychology tells us trauma fractures identity. Scripture shows us Jesus restoring it. Healing is not complete when pain stops. Healing is complete when identity is reclaimed.
Generational Dysfunction: When Trauma Feels Normal
Many women struggle to recognize trauma because it was woven into their earliest experiences. When dysfunction is generational, it becomes the water a child swims in. Addiction. Abuse. Emotional neglect. Volatility. Silence.
It was not normal.
It felt normal because it was familiar.
Exodus 34:7 speaks of the effects of sin echoing through generations, but Scripture never leaves us there. Ezekiel 18 makes clear that cycles can be interrupted.
Jesus enters generational patterns to break them.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come...”
New creation means old patterns do not get the final word.
Generational Dysfunction and the Moment of Awakening
When Jesus interrupts generational patterns, He rarely does so gently at first. He does so truthfully. Revelation often arrives as discomfort before it becomes freedom.
Many beloveds come to faith carrying stories they did not choose. They were born into environments shaped by addiction, abuse, emotional volatility, neglect, silence, or fear. These patterns were not explained. They were not processed. They were survived. Over time, what was dysfunctional began to feel normal, not because it was healthy, but because it was familiar.
Scripture gives language to this reality long before psychology does. In Exodus 20:5, God acknowledges that the consequences of sin and brokenness echo through generations. Yet Scripture also makes something else clear. God never intended for cycles to continue unchallenged.
Ezekiel 18:20 declares, “The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent...”
This passage is not about denial of impact. It is about responsibility and redemption. It tells us that while patterns may be inherited, they are not irreversible.
Psychology affirms what Scripture reveals. Adverse childhood experiences shape nervous systems, attachment styles, emotional regulation, and identity formation. A child raised in chaos learns hypervigilance. A child raised in silence learns suppression. A child raised in volatility learns to anticipate threat.
Beloveds, this is important. These adaptations were not moral failures. They were survival responses. But survival responses are not meant to become lifelong identities.
Jesus does not condemn survival. He heals what made survival necessary.
Tammy’s Heart Note
There was a season when pain had become my identity, and I could not see a way out of it. I grew up in generations of alcohol and abuse. The weight of what I lived through cannot be measured in years. It was inherited pain and inherited patterns that were never talked about, never worked through, never processed, never healed. These wounds lived on both sides of my family. My father carried them. His father carried them. My mother’s family carried the same brokenness. I was born into a cycle I did not create but learned to survive inside.
And like many trauma survivors, I repeated what I knew. I married my father and mother, an alcoholic, abusive man, because dysfunction feels familiar when it is all you have ever known. I thought I was choosing differently, but I was reliving the only patterns my body understood.
I told myself I would be different. I told myself I would break the pattern. But years later, I found myself holding a beer in my hand and yelling at my oldest son.
He was not responding to my words.
He was not reacting to my anger.
His eyes were locked on the beer in my hand.
In that moment, God showed me a truth I did not want to admit. I was repeating the very cycle that had tormented my family for generations. Not just repeating behavior, but repeating identity, trauma responses, and learned survival patterns that shape a person without consent.
Right there, with my son watching and my heart breaking, I told the Lord I was done carrying it. I asked Him to break every generational curse off my lineage and off my children. That moment shattered me, not to destroy me but to wake me up. I did not want my story to become “the woman with the issue” like the generations before me. I wanted Jesus to rewrite my identity and theirs.
And He did.
Scripture Reflection: When Jesus Interrupts the Cycle
Beloveds, this moment matters deeply. Scripture is filled with moments where God interrupts generational trajectories through awareness and surrender.
Psalm 78:5–7 speaks of God’s desire that each generation would teach the next, “…so the next generation would know them… and would not forget His deeds but would keep His commands.” When teaching is replaced by silence, cycles repeat. When truth is restored, cycles break.
Jesus specializes in these interruptions.
In John 8, Jesus meets a woman caught in a generational web of shame and exploitation. He does not deny her past. He does not minimize her pain. He tells her, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Not as condemnation, but as invitation into a new identity.
2 Corinthians 5:17 declares, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here.”
New creation does not mean pretending the past did not exist. It means the past no longer defines the future.
Psychology names this moment as insight. Faith names it repentance. Both point toward transformation.
Identity Restored: From Issue to Beloved
When Jesus calls the woman in Mark 5 “Daughter,” He restores what trauma and isolation tried to erase. Daughter is not a sentimental word. It is a covenantal one. It establishes belonging. It restores inheritance. It secures identity.
Galatians 4:7 reminds us, “So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are His child, God has made you also an heir.”
Beloveds, many women have lived as though they are still defined by what wounded them. Abuse becomes identity. Addiction becomes destiny. Trauma becomes personality. But Jesus refuses these definitions.
Psychology explains how identity fractures under prolonged trauma. Scripture reveals how identity is restored under divine love.
Healing is not only the removal of pain. Healing is the restoration of truth.
Conversational Pause for Reflection
Beloveds, pause here for a moment.
What if the issue that has followed a woman for years is not the truest thing about her?
What if the patterns that felt normal were never meant to be permanent?
What if Jesus is not asking for perfection, but for awareness and surrender?
These are not questions to rush through. They are questions to sit with. Jesus often asks questions not because He needs answers, but because beloveds need clarity.
Anchor Scriptures for Meditation
Psalm 34:18
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Isaiah 43:1
“But now, this is what the Lord says—He who created you…He who formed you…’Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”
Luke 13:12
“…Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”
These Scriptures anchor identity in Christ, not in trauma. Beloveds are invited to return to these passages throughout the week, allowing truth to settle where lies once lived.
Reflection Questions for Beloveds
In what ways has long-term pain shaped identity or self-understanding?
Which patterns felt normal growing up that may have actually been rooted in dysfunction?
Where has survival been mistaken for identity?
What does it stir to imagine Jesus calling a woman “Daughter” instead of by her issue?
What part of the story feels ready to be brought into the light so healing can continue?
Closing Prayer
Jesus, You see every beloved who has learned to survive what was never meant to be normal. You know the wounds that shaped identity and the patterns that felt familiar because they were inherited. Heal what was never meant to be endured. Interrupt every cycle that no longer belongs. Restore what shame has stolen. Speak truth louder than trauma. Call Your beloveds by name and teach them who they truly are in You. Amen.
Closing Blessing
May the Lord meet every beloved gently in the places that were hidden.
May shame lose its voice and loosen its grip.
May false names fall away and truth take root.
May healing reach backward and forward through generations.
May identity be anchored in love, not pain.
Beloveds, you are more than what wounded you.
You are more than what you survived.
You are His, seen, known, and deeply held.
Until next time…
Keep being Beautiful You!