Even having grown up with a church background there was one Biblical character that I had not known that much about until recently. I find it surprising that she does not come up more often especially when it comes to young adults and student ministries. Okay she was a prostitute and a metaphor for all that was wrong with the Israelite’s but she’s a character that tugs at my heart and maybe she’ll tug at yours to? If you have not already guessed the woman in whom I am referring is none other than Hosea’s reluctant wife Gomer.
Despite her bad reputation, which admittedly she deserved, I still felt for Gomer. I to know what it’s like to feel more comfortable in the slim and sin of the world rather than to sit with those “washed in holiness” and feel as if you don’t belong. I understand what it is like to run back to what you know is a life of sin. I know how hard it is to not fall into the complacency and contentment of this world.
Let me start by saying that this is not some self help book written by a trained and certified counselor or a preacher who’s put in years of ministry and biblical study in order to quash the cynics who have made it their lives ambition to actively “ignore” the church and force others to ignore their existence as well. I was an average American girl who was raised in an Evangelical church and went to a little private Christian school for the majority of her life. Now I’m just a girl who loves Jesus and writing has become a therapeutic release for something that I feel has been building in me for some time. My story is not what’s important. My story may not change the world. But what happened in my story changed my world and Gomer’s story speaks to my soul and if it can help my kindred spirit’s out there than maybe it’s my job to put it out there.
I grew up the second child to a four-person nuclear family that was at the time Catholic. Now to preference I do not hate the Catholic Church, but I grew up resenting the Catholic Church. Shortly after I was baptized my parents left the Catholic Church and my extended family in turn left us. We got birthday cards and we got Christmas presents but we do not have many stories of great times that we spent together or random trips we took to the beach. The stories we have are very precious to my heart but they are few and far between. Sadly, it’s the harder memories; the one’s where we felt pain that stick out through the haze of time. Like the grandparents days that came and went without anyone ever coming. Or the birthdays were people showed up for the obligatory amount of time to show you that they remembered the day in which you were born.
So that is something that I believe Gomer would understand. Being tossed aside and unwanted. Gomer was a promiscuous woman who was disreputable in her community. Gomer was not the beloved woman of her community. People would avoid eye contact or walk on the other side of the street to avoid being associated with her. As an eight-year-old girl when you have to sit there as the only kid with no grandparents on Grandparents day you start thinking that the common denominator is you. Maybe you are the problem. Maybe it’s you that would be the reason you have o family or why your parents fight. It’s a common childlike reaction, because children in their innocence and naivety are narcissistic. We believe that the world (or at least our world) begins and dies with us.
Unfortunately for Gomer that was not just child ignorance. When she heard whispers, they were about her. When she felt the awkward tension it was because of who she is. Gomer’s nightmare never ended and the stain on her conscious grew and grew with each passing mistake. But once you dig yourself into that sort of hole. It’s hard to think that you deserve to be out of it. You feel as if you do not deserve to walk on common ground.
So that’s how I felt for the majority of my teenage and young adult life. Off balance and fighting to get out of some sort of hole that I mentally dug for myself based on the guilt that I carried around (whether it was deserved or not).
Reluctantly Redeemed 