When I was little my momma would tell me stories of when she was a young girl growing up in California. One story in particular pops into mind every Sunday as I sit in the services of my foreign speaking family in Christ understanding not a word.
My grandparents once attended this church which my grandmother was not a fan of… Every Sunday morning she would arrive late, march her eight children through the sanctuary to the front where after sitting down she would pull bright orange earplugs out of her purse and quite visibly stuff them in her ears. She would then go on to ignore everything going on around her as she studied her Bible and preached herself her own sermon… I remember momma getting that sweet smile of those recalling the past as she said, “She always left those services saying she had preached the most delightful sermon to herself.”
This story still makes me chuckle… Who ever heard of going to church to simply ignore the service… and yet here I find myself completely immersed in a service where every little thing is in a completely different language and just as I begin to understand small things about it I pack up and move to a country where they speak yet another language. I have come to appreciate the idea of slipping into my own little world with my Bible as the service goes on around me. It was during one of these alone-surrounded-by-people moments that the Lord introduced me to himself in an entirely new way.
I was surfing through Genesis looking for my favorite story about Judah when I stumbled upon Chapter 29 verses 31-35… This passage is about Leah giving birth to her four sons and as I read it the puzzle pieces in my head began to fit together.
“When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, ‘It is because the Lord has seen my misery.Surely my husband will love me now.’
She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.’ So she named him Simeon.b]”>
Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.’ So he was named Levi.c]”>
She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’ So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.”
For the last few months on the race it seems like all the girls on my squad have been talking and writing blogs about their marriage to Jesus which made me very uncomfortable… I listened… I read… I played along, but all along in my head I scrunched up my brow and walked away from their weird ideas. God is my father… The idea that God could both be a husband and a father to me is very strange thus I shut that idea down… Until… God didn’t let me ignore this part of Him anymore.
“Katie, Search for Judah… Find Leah…”
I read the first line of this and my heart broke again for Leah. Was it her idea to be given in marriage to a man who wished for her sister. Did she enjoy living in a household where it was so obvious that her husband preferred another… She wanted to be loved by him… She wanted to please him… She had his sons for him.
Reuben… Now Jacob will love me.
Simeon… The Father heard that I am not loved… Jacob, Love me now?
Levi… Now Jacob has to love me… I have given him three sons… Please, please love me.
Can you not feel her anguish… Can you not relate as a married woman… as a single woman… She wanted to be loved as Rachel was loved. She did all the right things. She gave her husband sons… She loved him to the best of her ability… Why then does he not love her in return. Why is she not enough?
Judah… This time I will praise the Lord.
What changed between the births of her third and fourth sons? Leah saw what the women around me have all been staring in the face for months now… what I am just now beginning to realize… Leah saw who her perfect husband was.
Read this again.
“When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, ‘It is because the Lord has seen my misery.Surely my husband will love me now.'”
Leah was looking to Jacob to lead her… to love her… to protect her… to hold her when she was tired, cold, weary, broken… Jacob did not… but God did.
Time after time… Son after son she saw Jacob hold her child and walk away from her… He did not love her, and there was nothing she could do to force him to, but all along God stood behind her loving her, seeing her, strengthening her…
It wasn’t until Judah came about that she saw God holding her… loving her… caring so intentionally for her… Doing all the things she had spent years wishing Jacob would do for her…Jacob… her husband. Jacob failed her, but God never did.
I want to get married someday… Probably… and though I have no intention to marry someone who does not love me I know that he will fail me as I also will fail him. We are human. We can’t be all that we want to be or all that we are needed to be for each other. That is why God not only is Leah’s Father but also her Lover… her Husband…
My Father… My Lover… My Husband…
Leah told herself that she wasn’t enough for Jacob… and she wasn’t because she herself was not God… In the same way Jacob was not enough for her. Looking at him as her redeemer sold her into the lie that with his love everything would be as it should be. She would be happy…
God held Jacob at bay… He turned Jacob’s eyes towards Rachel because He loved Leah and He wished her to see what He wishes me to see.
He is MY perfect Husband.
I am not fully sure what this looks like… How does what go about viewing God as both your father and your husband? I have to further search this out… All I do know is that I have become one of the weirdos who sees Christ as Father, Redeemer, and Husband… Thanks to Leah…
All for now through the eyes of a storyteller.
