What’s bothering Rachel?
This is a story that’s based on real events in the bible, there’s not a lot of details, so I’m filling in some blanks with what I think may have happened. This is dedicated to young ladies that struggle with self-harming or cutting, but it applies to all ages and sexes.
Okay sweetie, the first thing you got to know is that a huge part of the bible follows one family throughout history. They had some pretty cringey people and customs, but so do we. One of those customs was that people were encouraged to marry close relatives! You got to remember that the whole population of the planet started with two people and there wasn’t law and order, as we know it, so there was safety in having close alliances with your neighbors, so go easy on them. They had their reasons.
So, this girl Rachel, she lived in a land called Haran with her dad, brothers, and older sister… no mention of the mother, so there’s that. We know about Rachel because of the bible, Genesis chapters 29 to 35, tells the story. So, Rachel kind of got stuck in a situation: she had to watch over her father’s sheep and there was this situation where she had to water the sheep, but her distant cousins kept a big rock covering the well so that she would need one of them to open the well for her.
She wasn’t strong enough to lift the stone and her cousins (the only relatives within 500 miles) must have all been trying to get with her, so they worked it out so that nobody would move the stone for Rachel, unless they were all there. That’s kind of what I get from it anyway. So where was her father and brothers and sister, while all that was going on? It kind of looks like she wasn’t treated very fairly. The bible doesn’t say, but I picture those cousins being creepy and not nice.
So this one day, Rachel was bringing the sheep to the well and she knew that she would have to wait, while the boys gawked at her, when she noticed this new guy talking with her cousins. At that very moment, the new guy (Jacob) who had traveled about 500 miles to find his mother’s brother, discovered that Rachel was his uncle’s daughter and that the guys at the well were his grandfather’s nephews’ descendants. Well, Jacob got a look at Rachel, and she was beautiful, so he must have figured out why the guys were all hanging around the well and acting all creepy about moving the stone. Well Jacob wasn’t having it! He rolled the stone by himself and watered Rebeca’s flock and then he KISSED her right in front of everybody!
Can you imagine all that? She went from having a lowly job in a cringey place with creepy people and her immediate family didn’t seem to care… she probably had all kinds of feelings about that but there’s no indication that she had a voice in the situation. Then, all the sudden Jacob arrives on the seen! I don’t know, but I suspect that Jacob was handsome, I do know he was strong, because he moved the stone by himself and, apparently, nobody tried to stop him. She must have liked the kiss because she ran and told her father! It must have seemed like a dream come true! Before you knew it, they were engaged! Jacob had made a deal with Laban (her dad) where Jacob would work for Laban for 7 years for Rachel’s hand in marriage. The bible says that Jacob served those seven years and they seemed like only a few days because of the love he had for Rachel