I am Leah

I am Leah. I am the unloved one. I am like Jacob’s first wife, the one he was tricked into marrying. Unwanted, unloved, rejected.

This is Evil One’s message for me. It has been impossible to miss. He wrote it in my flesh and burned it on my heart from the beginning. He did this through a father who left me when I was 3 and never looked back. He whispered ‘you are nothing’ as my dad refused to pay child support but somehow found a way to buy his girlfriend a sports car. He shouted ‘you are worthless’ when those who had themselves been abused and perverted molested me. He willed me to believe it as my mother who should have protected me and delighted in me was oblivious and distracted by her own (very real) pain and betrayal. This was my first reality. It is what I heard and what I knew before anything else.

But the story doesn’t end there. God called me to Himself and became my Father when I was only six. He made His presence known and drew me after Himself. I have heard His voice and sensed His love for these many years. I know that He wants me to have a future and a hope. I know experientially that He is the Father to the fatherless. I know he is the One who sets the lonely in families. I know He knew me in my mother’s womb. I know, too, that He is the One who chose the exact time and place that I should live (the evidence that this is a sign of love and grace sometimes feels sparse). I know these things in my mind and in my spirit. But the other messages, the ones I hope against hope are lies were planted first. The enemy has rarely ceased trying to remind me of his truth about me. He has used his authority as prince of this world to create new situations that confirm what he wants me to know: people will always betray you, no one will ever really love you, you will never belong, you are worthless.

How is it that after more than thirty years of knowing my Savior, the enemy’s words about me still sometimes sound truer? Am I missing something here? What do I need to mourn, confess, pray, or receive? Then again, maybe God doesn’t want this to change. Maybe He wants me to struggle with these things until heaven. Or longer.

In the deepest part of me, I know it can’t be true. I know too much about His ways and His heart to believe that. I know that He is a God who gave up His only beloved Child to save me. I know He will leave the 99 to find the one. I know He is the kind of God Who would run to meet a prodigal daughter, Who welcomes the repentant touch of a promiscuous woman, Who wants people from every tribe and tongue and nation to be part of His family. He is the kind of God who even wants me. Who loves me and will fight for me and will never let me go no matter what.

The battle is far from over. But somehow even now I know I have been given a new name that contains life and love and belonging and wholeness. He has won me and I am His.