To be invisible.
I know what it’s like.
And my wounds of being alone, abandoned, and unseen are the deepest. They have left the brightest scars on my heart, scars that still ache sometimes, especially when it rains.
I was a five year old whose mom was wrestling so hard against depression and just making it out of bed that I was hardly noticed. And things were crazy and out of control and my Dad was frustrated with the mess. So when my sister was born and then my brother and then another brother I tried to take the strands of wild and weave them into something stable.
I was the eight year old doing laundry and making meals and when my baby brother crawled into my bed in the mornings instead of my moms I hugged him close, him and his chubby diaper butt, and that was just life and I learned early how to stuff down emotions and not let myself feel.
Because when your moms overwhelmed and your dads angry and your siblings are crying you feel like there is no room left for you. And you begin to wonder what’s the use anyway? No one cares. There were times when I got so upset all my hurt broke loose and I would run to the darkness of my closet and sit on the floor and cry. And while part of me ran so I could cry in private, a bigger part of me wanted to see if anyone would run after me. I wanted to be found. I just wanted someone to open that closet door and see me.
No one ever did.
Girl, I know what it is to feel invisible.
And guess what? We aren’t the only ones.
In reading through Genesis recently I stumbled onto the story of Hagar. I had always just skimmed over her story but this time I realized her story is pretty close to mine.
If you guys don’t know the story of Hagar you should go check out Genesis chapter 16.
It’s right after God promises Abram (soon to be Abraham) that He is going to make his descendants into a great nation. Sarai (Sarah) hasn’t been able to have kids so far and both her and Abram are super old. They’re thinking, “Seriously? How the heck are we supposed to have kids?” So Sarai has the idea that maybe Abram should sleep with Hagar her slave and maybe he’ll be able to have children that way.
So Abram sleeps with Hagar and she gets pregnant.
Now you have to realize that in those days the worth and identity of a woman was completely tied up in how many children she had. The more children you had the more you were respected. Women who weren’t able to have children were looked down upon and considered to be cursed by God.
So you can imagine the tension of emotions that bubbled up once Hagar was pregnant with Abrams son and Sarai wasn’t. Come on, women. We know how competitive and nasty we can be with each other over HAIR, imagine the feelings surrounding a CHILD. Well that spark of female fierceness explodes between Hagar and Sarai. Hagar ends up getting seriously abused. She can’t handle it so she takes off running through the dessert.
Here’s where mine and Hagar’s story begin to look similar.
Here is Hagar. She is pregnant, she’s an Egyptian outsider. She is a slave who is totally alone and has NOTHING. She is an invisible nobody. Sarai doesn’t care about her. Abram doesn’t care about her. She is overwhelmed, hurt and scared so she is running away.
Well I love what happens next as she stops by this spring to drink and catch her breath. Genesis says, “The Angel of the Lord found her…” and I love that because the fact that it uses the word found indicates that he was looking for her. This is an Egyptian slave who knew nothing about Abram and Sarai’s God. She didn’t worship Him or even know of Him and yet in her darkest time God was pursuing her.
Then He blesses her. He tells her that her descendants will be great and that the son in her womb will be a wild independent man and she’s got to name the boy Ishmael. But what hits me the hardest is the next line where Hagar names God. If you know anything about the names of God you know he has a TON of names. Yet all throughout scripture it is God who introduces and names himself. This is the one time in scripture where someone is allowed to name God.
So Hagar names Him Jehovah El Roi The-God-Who-Sees-Me. And it’s crazy that the one person in all of scripture who is allowed to name God is not David or Moses or Daniel or Paul. It’s this lonely, hurting, scared Egyptian girl who knows absolutely nothing about this Hebrew God except that He sees her.
And to a girl that has felt invisible for so long, this story is like a whisper from God straight to my wounded heart, “I SEE YOU”.
He sees Me. In all my mess and tears and overwhelm and mistakes My God sees me.
He sees You too. Girl, I know what it is to feel invisible but God sees you. When no one else notices your tears, He sees them and wipes them from your face. When no one else sees how overwhelmed you are He sees, and He takes the weight. When you are running away from it all through your own dessert He is chasing after you.
And when you can’t take it anymore and you run to the darkness of your closet, He will find you. He will open the door and sit down next to you and pull you close because you are His. And you might feel like a hopeless mess, like a stuttering apology of a person but He sees you here and He smiles because He can see past this and knows that you are so much more then this moment.
Remember who your God is.
He is Jehovah El Roi.
He is the God-Who-Sees-YOU.
And whatever you are going through the one thing you are not,
is invisible.
You are fully seen and you are fully loved.
Remember that.
