Oprah often asks her guests – in her TV interviews and in her magazine – this question:  “What do you know for sure?”

Of the many ways I could answer that, here is one that remains constant.  I know for sure that Jesus understands a woman’s heart.

It started out being “I know that Jesus understands us.”  A Palm Sunday sermon 20 years ago took that truth from a head knowledge to a more powerful heart connection.   The gist of the sermon was that Jesus, during His time on earth, and especially during the events of Holy Week, knew what it felt like to be lonely, to be misunderstood, to have the “system” (both religious and legal) that was supposed to protect people turn against Him, to have friends break promises, betray Him and not be there for Him.  The list could go on and on. 

The point is – it hit me in a new and powerful way that I was not only forgiven, I was understood.  My specifics might not line up with what Jesus experienced, but the comfort of knowing that my emotions

were understood became real.

Fast forward a lot of years and I found myself struggling to breathe (metaphorically) because the pain of a marriage that ended was so great, the betrayal so agonizing.  In reality, it had been coming for a long time but those early weeks and months after the separation took the pain to a new level.  

I found myself reading the gospels and becoming acutely aware of Jesus’ encounters with women.  There’s the woman who anointed His feet, the woman at the well, the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, mothers whose children died, women who needed physical or spiritual healing, and the list goes on.  Luke even specifically refers to the women who financially supported Jesus’ ministry out of their own means, giving them names – not just referring to them as someone’s wife. 

I was a broken-hearted woman reading these stories, someone whose core identity as a wife and a woman had been trampled on.  And here’s what I saw - a lot of little details that brought hope to my heart:  Jesus looked into their eyes, He praised them in front of the crowd and He took specific steps to restore them to community (i.e., to alleviate their shame and their isolation).  He acknowledged and received their faith and their love – and treated both of those as precious gifts.   I have journal pages full of the emotions connected to the understanding and comfort that were embedded in those encounters.

The agony passed, the healing began, I could breathe again, do what I needed to do and even thrive.  And I knew this for sure:  Jesus understands a woman’s heart.