Waking Up with Leah

I feel like I've been through the ringer during the last few days. The pressure to make a quick decision about my financial and artistic future had me scurrying to procure wisdom from every direction. Thank goodness, the hefty choice was one I did not end up having to make. Coupled with a little disappointment was relief. I'm out of control once again, but in the best way possible. A needed reminder.

I recently listened to an old Tim Keller sermon* about the story of Jacob, Laban, Leah and Rachel (found in Genesis 29). Generally speaking, it's a story of a deceptive son who runs away from home in search of solace from himself. Jacob ends up working for his uncle, Laban, and falling in love with Laban's beautiful youngest daughter, Rachel. Jacob asks Laban for her hand in marriage, and devotes seven years of his life in labor for her. After his last day of work, he receives who he thinks is his bride in a drawn out wedding ceremony. Throughout the wedding day and into the night, she is veiled, as per custom. It isn't until the morning after that Jacob realizes he's been duped when he wakes up beside Leah, Rachel's older (less-attractive) sister.

I, too, try to escape the messes I've made to search for an evasive happiness in something that cannot bring it. I toil for what I think I want to be my dream-come-true. But, no picture-perfect job, no full-of-life-culture-art city, no other wonderful-beyond-words human being can bring the fulfillment I seek. As Keller says, in running to these things for my answers, I go to sleep with Rachel, and wake up with Leah.

And I always will if I hold to a conscious or subconscious belief that a, b or c will make my life complete. I walk around in circles of my twenty-something search for life meaning. I wait for it all to make sense. Maybe once I do this, get there, achieve that. But Rachel is just a gorgeous idea. And she always seems just beyond my reach.

Perhaps it's just because she was never meant to be my prize.

*audio here, entitled "The Struggle for Love."