Of Mandrakes and Mourning

Hadyn Kihm
Genesis 30:1–24
Romans 8:18–30

The story of Leah and Rachel seems an odd one for an Advent devotional.

For me, it’s a story about pain. The pain the sisters inflicted on each other, as well as the pain they caused their servants, Bilhah and Zilpah, who were caught in the middle.

Brené Brown says, when pain is ignored, it becomes fear or hate; when it is never transformed, it becomes resentment and bitterness.

Rachel and Leah’s pain is made evident in how they named their sons. Each name is more heartbreaking than the last, each one a physical representation on the outside of their mother’s pain on the inside. What might have happened if the sisters had recognized each other’s hurt, rather than quibble over mandrakes? How could they transform their pain?

In April of this year, my friends Lauren and Kamel Dupuis-Perez were killed by a drunk driver.

It has been difficult to admit how much Lauren’s death upset me because it seems ridiculous. Lauren and I never met in person, only over social media. How can you miss someone you never knew in real life?

I didn’t feel like I deserved to grieve. Lauren’s real, non-online friends were the ones who had the right to mourn, not me. Did Rachel or Leah have an inner critic that made them feel they didn’t deserve to feel their pain?

Romans 8 reminds us that, “the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. It prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying.”

Later in the year, a friend took me aside and asked about Lauren. Just having my grief acknowledged gave me permission to feel it. I have since found other online friends of Lauren’s and we’ve given each other space to feel what we feel. My pain was not gone, but it was transformed.

I know this isn’t a very hopeful devotional. There has been so much pain in the past two years. This Advent season, may we make space for the Spirit to help us in our weakness and transform our pain, through the Father who knows all hearts.