Joseph's second son is Ephraim - God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering. Unlike Manasseh (forgetting), Ephraim acknowledges the suffering while asserting that fruitfulness came despite it, because of it, in the place of it.
I spent years trying to either/or my trauma - either acknowledge it or move past it. This verse suggests both/and. The fruitfulness doesn't erase the land of suffering. It grows there. In there.
My recovered addicts often name children with this kind of intention - acknowledging that they were born from a parent who survived what could have destroyed them, and that survival produced something beautiful. Ephraim captures that exactly.
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