Identity.

So you know how last entry I was talking about all of the things that build up my identity. Today I realized that I forgot the most important thing about me.

I'll start with a story. Once upon a time there was a woman named Rachel (not me.) She was just out of school and had a nasty full-time job to help support her family. One day she was running errands and met a man named Jacob. He was a friend of her family, and was coming into town to visit her. While Jacob was visiting the family, he and Rachel fell in love. He asked Rachel's father if he could marry her. Since Jacob was a family friend you'd think the answer would have been yes, but her father would only allow it if Jacob worked on the family farm- for seven years. True story. So since Jacob was such a good guy, and loved Rachel so much that he was willing to respect her father's maniacal demands, he worked in the fields for seven years. If he was 21 when he started, he would have to wait until he was 28 to marry Rachel.

So he worked hard, and they waited, and finally the seven year deadline rolled around and the wedding day came. Except that Rachel's father was a hoorible kind of person. Rachel was going to wear a really old-fashioned wedding dress, probably picked out or handed down by her mother, and the veil was ridiculously thick. So Rachel's father pulled her out of the wedding and hid Leah, her older sister, in the thick wedding dress. So, after slaving and waiting for seven years, Jacob ends up marrying Leah! True story.

All was not lost, this was a charming culture in which a man could have more than one wife. But Rachel's dad said that he would have to work another seven years. Now we're talking waiting until he's 35 years old, to marry the woman he met 14 years ago. And he did it. He didn't steal Rachel, they didn't elope, he didn't give up and settle for her sister. He didn't disgrace her or dishonor her family. They worked and waited some more, dealt with complicated family issues, and in seven years they were married. They had two boys and lived happily ever after.

This is not a Jerry Springer story, it's actually a Bible story. I've known it all my life, and it's only started to astound me now. I cannot imagine someone putting up with my insane family and working for 14 years for nothing but the right to marry me.

And then I got to thinking, I got better than that. Once upon a time there was an ancient, beautiful, wise god. And he fell in love with a woman named Rachel ( that's me!) He fell in love with me way before I was even born. Even though he was this amazing god, that lived in heaven and ruled the universe, he came to earth. He started out as a baby, like us. He let people wipe his bottom and hand-feed him, and then he had to deal with adolescents and curfews and taxes. He put up with all of this, no pay whatsoever, for 32 years. That's more than 14 times 2. And to top everything off, he ticked off some powerful people and they killed him. They killed him in the most painful way a human being could be killed in the history of mankind. He did this so that in 2,000 years, he could have a happily ever after with me. The person who created my universe loved me so much that he allowed himself to be degraded to human form, and endured the worst pain a human form can take, all in the hopes, the HOPES, that in 2,000 years I would love him back.

So. Even though "I have started a life for myself, I have seen far-away places, I have met death, and I have climbed 500 feet of bare mountain wall with nothing but my bare hands and a pair of hiking boots," it all fails in comparison to this. Someone that is infinitely too good for me loved me anyways, loved me enough to die for me, without ever being sure that I would love him back. That is the most important part of my identity.