When You Don’t Know What You Need

A couple months into our marriage, I was driving home from a trip I took regularly about an hour away. Steve Jobs was still working on the iPhone, and the internet was far in our future, so I had no idea that the light freezing precipitation I was swishing off the windshield would deter my plans for the rest of the day. 

Approaching a familiar overpass I crossed several times a week, I kept my cruise control on. The surface had covertly frozen over, and my tires starting slipping. The guardrail of the overpass spun quickly into view as my car hit the median and my sternum hit the steering wheel. I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the car door, and backed away from the vehicle, then stood in the ice storm, contemplating my next step.

Several minutes later, an 18-wheeler stopped alongside my wreck. A kind-looking driver got out and asked if I needed a ride. Shivering and in shock, I climbed into his cab. (Spoiler: here’s where the story could have taken a dark turn, but by the grace of God, that poor decision did not have poor consequences.) The truck driver was actually headed in the opposite direction, but I didn’t care. In his cab, I was warm and dry and not hanging out on the side of the highway. 

I was disoriented and a little dazed (on top of being directionally-challenged.) So when he drove me an hour further away from home,  I didn’t notice. Once he realized this, he let me off at a diner alongside the interstate. In my haste to accept help, I had left my coat, my purse, and all my belongings in the wrecked car. I stepped into the busy diner looking like a confused, drowned rat. I thought I needed supper and a (warm) invisibility cloak, but I settled for a glass of water and a booth in the corner offered by a kind and observant waitress.

WE THINK WE KNOW WHAT WE NEED

In John 4:4-42 we meet an unnamed Samaritan woman on a practical mission, too. She was attempting to meet her daily physical need for water at the city well. She hoped to avoid stares and social shame due to her past. So she came to draw water in the harsh midday heat, hoping it would be a solitary journey at that time of day. 

But like most of us, she didn’t know what she truly needed. Like I’ve done so many times, she came for something physical and immediate when she needed something spiritual and eternal.

That woman at the well and I both thought we needed water and a place to disappear. Our deeper thirst went unnamed. Not knowing what we needed, we were both willing to settle for the familiar, over the fulfilling.

Not knowing what we needed, we were both willing to settle for the familiar, over the fulfilling.

The woman at the well thought she needed hydration, but Jesus saw what she truly needed—salvation. So Jesus broke social barriers to interact with her, revealing Himself as the Messiah, and offering her “living water.”

I’ve often thought about how, by simply seeing me, that waitress was Jesus to me that day. She set aside her expected norm (and job) of attending to paying diners, noticing I was cold, had no money, and was upset. I said I was fine. But the truth was, I needed so much at that moment, I didn’t know what to ask for. And I certainly couldn’t identify my biggest need.

All our lives, Jesus sees us and meets us in our journey, too.

Even if we come seeking something else.

BEING OPEN TO BIGGER, UNIDENTIFIED NEEDS

My granddaughter lives in a dry climate, and is a fanatic at “staying hydrated,” even at four years old. Growing up without a single “water bottle” in our farmhouse and now on a doctor-directed fluid restriction, it’s a new idea to this gramma. But I’m getting onboard.  Recently, my granddaughter was uncharacteristically cranky while we were playing at her favorite park. I couldn’t figure out why. (She tried a granola bar and refused a nap.) But my daughter —her mama— knew. That four-year-old was just thirsty and a few gulps from her princess Owala did the trick. 

This child of God is no different. I come to Him with my asks. Obvious and human ones. But He sees me. He knows me. Most importantly, He knows my deepest need, even if I don’t have the intellect to know it or the words to ask for it.

Sometimes our very humanity can hide our deepest need. Our bodies can betray us. Especially when pain is involved.

When we have a toothache, our deepest need is still Jesus, even though every fiber of our brain screams it’s lidocaine.

My mind lied to me, too. From my journal early last year:

Last week, I sat down on the floor to put my shoes on and didn’t get up for four hours. I thought I’d forgotten how to get up. I thought I just needed a little instruction/reminder or maybe a quick YouTube video. In fact, I had two blood clots in my brain that kept my entire left side from functioning. But I had no idea. I even argued with my husband when he heard my mumbled voice over the phone, raced home, took one look at me, dialed 911, and said, “You’ve had a stroke!” 

Turns out, God has always been an expert at knowing what we really need. Especially when we don’t. God often answers a deeper prayer than the one we prayed; He’s not limited by our self-awareness.

God often answers a deeper prayer than the one we prayed;
He’s not limited by our self-awareness.

In the bible story, Jesus shouldn’t have even been speaking to the woman at the well. (She was not only a woman, but also a Samaritan, not to mention her checkered past with men.)  Yet Jesus broke cultural, religious, and social barriers to reach her (John 4: 9).

With the woman at the well, Jesus named the bigger need she couldn’t articulate.

Like Jesus and my husband, that diner waitress was observant and sympathetic. She saw me climb out of that cab and into the café. She noticed I was cold and crying. And she didn’t look away. Instead, she offered me something I deeply needed, but didn’t ask for:  a quarter for the payphone to call my husband so he could pick me up and drive me home.

HOLDING OUR “NEED” AND GOD’S PROVISION AT THE SAME TIME

 Over the last ten years, I’ve been trying so hard to get rid of this chronic illness, not knowing that what I really needed was just to find a way to carry it. Faithfully. 

And it occurred to me finally that faith was not designed to stop our bodies from being human.

Yet sometimes we expect faith to do just that. Sometimes we expect to become super human because of our prayers and belief. If Jesus’s body (or any one of his closest apostles) couldn’t escape pain and torture, ours can’t either. It’s been modeled and we’ve been warned.  Jesus said, in this world you will have trouble (John 16:33). Not, you might have trouble, but you will. 

Even at the well, Jesus gently exposed that the woman was asking the wrong questions (John 4: 10). But her seeking the water in the first place brought her face to face with Jesus. So our even overvalued menial requests can do the same.

On our way to the well, we have needs. And we suffer. But not in vain.

On our way to the well, we have needs.
And we suffer. But not in vain.

Suffering is often the road that leads us to finally submit to God and seek salvation. Which is, after all, our biggest need.

Pain and suffering are frequently the means by which we become motivated to finally surrender to God and seek the cure of Christ…that’s what we need most desperately. That’s what will bring us the supreme joy of knowing Jesus. Any suffering, the great Christians from history will tell you, is worth that result.”

– Peter John Kreeft

The small detail of an abandoned jar is one of the most powerful images in the whole gospel:

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?’” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

John 4: 28 -30 (NIV)

The woman forgot what she came to the well for because she found something incomparably better. When Jesus meets our real need, it changes not just our internal state but our direction and purpose. We often abandon what we thought we needed in the first place.

The woman’s journey is our own. Often we want what God can give more than we want God. Our greatest need is not just answered by Jesus — it is Jesus himself; the gift and the Giver are the same.

Jesus met the deepest needs of the woman at the well. She got the gift of the Giver. I did, too.

It’s important to note that before Jesus revealed publicly that He was the Messiah, He told her. Not because He needed her. Because He knew what she needed. She needed to know that He trusted her with an important part of His story. We need that, too. Whatever little piece of the plot we’re stewarding.

Despite her troubled past, she became an immediate evangelist to the village that had scorned her, shifting the focus to spiritual salvation over strict religious tradition. The woman who once hid at noon ran back to broadcast to everyone. That anonymous diner waitress made me more observant, too. I look for the hurting in hidden places more now. (And, turns out, now I’m spreading the word about stroke awareness, too.)

At that diner, I walked away from the obscurity of that booth and the sandwich the waitress had donated to my cause. Even the glass of water was barely touched. Not because I wasn’t hungry or thirsty or shivering or embarrassed. But because I got a quarter I hadn’t realized I needed just yet.

Because, like the woman at the well, by being seen, I finally realized my biggest need was simply finding a way Home.

Listen to this post read by the author HERE.