As a child, I loved learning about the meaning of names. An old baby name book was one of my favorite reads. I would research meanings and name variants, dreaming up names of entire imaginary families. My childhood church would minister to the neighborhood summer festival every year with hand-calligraphed cards explaining the meaning of even the most unique names. I knew my name meant "victorious spirit" and liked how my middle name sounded close enough to a Bible character.
My sweet mother dressed me up as Miriam one year for a Halloween-timed Harvest party at church. Head covered in a scarf and baby Moses in a wicker basket slung over my arm, it was her best costume of my childhood. I thought of myself in Miriam's situation, as a humble older sister who was brave in the face of authority (Exodus 2:4-8). Did she cry as she waited and watched her baby brother floating in the river? Was she old enough to know that she was a slave, and that her brother's life had become illegal in Egypt? Her name means "beloved" or "sea of bitterness." This little girl had every reason to choose a life around either meaning, as a slave first and a free woman in the wilderness. I wasn't named after Miriam, though.
My middle name honors a great grandfather I never met. His name can mean "beloved" when it comes from France and honors the Blessed Mother. His name can also mean "bitter" when it moves from Hebrew into western languages, like when Naomi renames herself in grief (Ruth 1:20). But my favorite meaning for Marion is "drop of sea." My soul opened to the beautiful history of the Church at a congregation named Star of the Sea, after Mary's traditional name meaning. We can each find ourselves in this beautiful metaphor, a single drop in the sea. The tension amongst beloved and bitter also finds it's meaning in the swirling of the oceans.
Later in my journey I discovered the Bible figure with a name closest to mine: Lo-Ruhamah. She's a child only described by the audacity of her existence: the prophet Hosea marries Gomer, her whoring mother. Her story is never elaborated, but her name is a prophecy against Israel. Her name means "not loved." She is named by God to show favor and forgiveness to Judah, not Israel. Her name brings judgment to an entire people.
This is only a repeated older prophecy, one brought through a weeping mother of God's people: Rachel. Rachel's name means "ewe," a fitting name for a shepherdess. Her story is messy and awful, like many stories of women in the ancient middle east. Like a sheep, her father switches her out of her own wedding. Like a sheep, she is favored and then cast aside. She weeps and bargains with God and man as she struggles with fertility throughout the 3rd quarter of the Genesis story. She lies about her period in order to steal an idol from her father's house, craving a son. She bargains with her sister over mandrakes as a fertility charm. She was beloved (Genesis 29:8) and becomes bitter, offering her servant to her husband in pursuit of the blessing of children.
Jeremiah prophesies the genocide that will accompany Jesus' birth by describing Rachel's weeping, "a sound is heard in Ramah, a sound of weeping and bitter grief. It is the sound of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." (Jeremiah 31:15, referenced in Matthew 2:18). The New Testament explanation connects this prophecy to the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth and reminds Jewish readers of Miriam's role in rescuing Moses from a similar genocide. Rachel, though, would have known deep loss as she struggled with jealousy towards her fertile sister and hatred towards her husband's concubines. She weeps with bitter grief. This ewe will not be the mother of the Lamb, but her unloved sister will, instead. God enables Rachel to have a son and she rejoices, then another and she dies.
These women are connected with narratives of grief and hope. Their stories explain the complexity within grief, being beloved and struggling with bitterness. There's a reminder of our smallness, a drop in the sea. Yet, always a theme of God's love finding triumph. I rejoice with Miriam as children find homes. I weep with Rachel, struggling to be comforted for children who are no more. Even Lo-Ruhamah's story transforms as God promises "I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them." (Hosea 14:4) I hope to lean into this layer of the Gospel story as I live life with the name Laura Marion.
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