A Broken Girl

I flipped through the pages of the book I held within my hands. I was engrossed. The stories of men and women came alive before my eyes; never could I have imagined just how powerfully the apocryphal stories would change my life. Encouraged by my Torah teacher, I devoured the Old Testament apocrypha, as though it were a single glass of water because it was and I was thirsty. Thirsty to discover the stories that had been forgotten and left out. One story however, had a particularly big impact on my heart it was the story of a woman named Judith. Judith was a woman acquainted with loss, but her bravery and courage struck something in me. I researched Judith’s story for an entire year, the incongruent dates, the strange characters, all of it, until I was satisfied. When I finally closed the book, I cried prayerfully and whispered to YHVH about this connection I felt with Judith. I could sense Him smiling, perhaps He knew something I didn’t, perhaps...

- Aliyah Lauren Jacobs

Ten years later, Judith lay tucked somewhere inside but she was far from my mind. Instead, I was in bed, sick, broken in spirit and in body. I had been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which caused insulin resistance and chronic menstruation. To top it off, I had had an emotional breakdown due to burn out, giving out too much, and enduring the hardships of broken relationships and pain. I spent a lot of time in bed, too sick to venture out but it was in that brokenness where my true healing came. I was in the arms of my Beloved Messiah, Yeshua. Gently each day I felt Him mop my brow and ease my fears about my sickness, and about the future. I remember experiencing His power, and His Love in waves. I had served Him faithfully for years and even in my sickness I desired more, I desired Him and I desired to live and to speak of His Glory and what He was doing within me. One night when I could not sleep, I heard the Holy Spirit tell me to go over to my bookshelf and take out the apocrypha. I opened up the apocrypha to the book of Judith and in an instant, I grabbed a notebook and a pencil and began writing Judith’s story in to a novel format. Each day I would write, and as I would write I would feel an intense nearness of Yeshua, something I can only describe as a Jacob’s Ladder. A place where angels were ascending a