Moving Past Trauma

    When something horrible and traumatic happens it can feel impossible to move forward.  It can define a person for the rest of their life if they can't find a way to move forward.  Make no mistake, it does change you.  You will be a different person.  It is okay to mourn what you have lost, but then you have to give it over to God.  Otherwise you will live the rest of your life on the sidelines watching other people actually living.  God wants you to use what happened to become stronger, help other people, and move closer to Him.

    We don't really know what happened to Dinah after her violation.  We do know that her brothers went too far making a bad situation worse.  We know that Israel saw the big picture, but came across uncaring.  We have no idea how all this affected Leah, Dinah's mother.  How does a family move forward together?  Israel turned to God.  He knew his weaknesses.  He knew that this was beyond him.  God knew that they needed a fresh start, so he sent them to resettle in another place (inside the promised land).  Before they could go they had to do a family spiritual cleansing.  That means ridding the entire household of idols.  It what physical idols, but I think God was really wanting their hearts to remove all anger and hurt.  God wanted them to rid themselves of what happened, so that it would not follow them.  He wanted them to become a family and not strangers that shared the same bloodline.

    God protected this family. The people believed in God and knew that He was with this family.  This concluded to the boys having no repercussions for killing their tribal leader.  When the family got to their new home, God came to Israel again.  This is when Jacob officially became Israel.  God reaffirmed the promise that He had made with his grandfather, Abraham.  People need constant reminders or we forget or start to doubt that things will happen.  After all, he was the third generation and not too much had changed for the family.

    Israel had 11 sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zubulun, Gad, Asher, Dan, Naphtali, and Joseph.  Rachel became pregnant again.  She was not that young anymore and this pregnancy was difficult for her.  She ended up dying after giving birth to Israel's 12th son, Ben-Oni, called Benjamin.  Israel gave her a nice burial with a pillar over her tomb and then moved on.  This is when his son Reuben slept with Bilhah, Israel's concubine.  Israel dealt with that the best he could, but his heart was already broken over Rachel.  He went home again because his father, Isaac died.  He and Esau buried Isaac together.

    The family went through the motions of ritual cleansing when Israel told them too, but it was just ritual for some.  Salvation and spiritual cleansing is a personal decision.  We can all go through the motions, but our actions will eventually tell the world where the heart really lye.  Reuben resented his father, probably for several reasons.  He was the oldest.  He had seen all of Israel's mistakes.  I think Israel's reaction to Dinah's situation was the final straw for him.  Sinning to hurt someone else for sinning never makes the situation better.

Genesis 35