The God who sees me

I have a sign in my office that says “You are the God who sees me.”  It’s from Genesis, from the story of Hagar, poor, mistreated Hagar, a chess piece in the game between Sarai and Abram.  Cast out and pregnant, alone in the world, God showed up and showed Hagar that she was not alone, not invisible.  And she met “the God who sees her” in this encounter and was forever changed. 

I caught sight of this sign today as I hurriedly packed up my things, rushing home to beat the impending storm.  For some reason these words provoked a strange reaction in me.  I felt a rush of hope rise from my gut and then my heart immediately pushed it back down.  Ha, it said.  I am not seen.

I’m in a season of unknowns right now.  We don’t know where we are going to live, when we will move, where Monster will be able to go to school.  Life feels like the complicated domino set ups I used to create where one piece, one unknown becoming clear, will set off a chain reaction knocking down the other unknowns.  As we wait in this holding pattern for something to happen I find myself absentmindedly running through all the possible outcomes, going through them over and over as if some sort of answer will become clear and our wait will be over.  If this happens then we can do X.  If that happens we’ll be able to do Y. If and then and if and then.  Too many combinations and possible outcomes.

And then, of course, we got news last week that hit our domino setup like my brother's basketball bomb, scattering all the unknowns, changing nothing and changing everything all at once.

And lately I’ve wondered if I’m invisible to God.

We’ve lived in this land of unknowns for months now.  I have prayed big prayers during this time.  I’ve vacillated back and forth from calm and trusting to panicked and fearful.  I’ve asked others to pray, an act of faith and vulnerability I don’t often exercise.  I’ve prayed expecting God to show up and prayed expecting Him not to.  I’ve mostly behaved like a high school girl with the boy she likes, desperately trying to play it cool so as not to reveal how much I care about these outcomes, how not ok I will be if it turns out God does not see me.  I tell myself that my problems are not that big, first world at best.  My kids have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads.  I can afford all the things I need and even a lot that I want.  Maybe God is frying bigger fish, like ending world hunger or human trafficking.  Just be cool and take one for the team on this already.  Or maybe the reason God doesn’t see me right now is because I’m not holy enough, not good enough.  If I were living more righteously, doing more for God he would see me.  I know plenty of people who were in the same boat as me, in the exact same situation, and God did not answer their prayers.  Why do I think I’m any different?

And still, at my deepest core, I want to know that I am seen.  I want to believe that God sees me, sees my problems and cares.  The story of Hagar is the story of a mother and a son.  Of God seeing this mother and providing for her so she could provide for her unborn son. All of these outcomes boil down to my son, to what is best for my son, and I need God to see me as he saw Hagar, to allow me to help my son.

So I am praying today to be seen.  I know that God sees me.  I know this logically, but today I want to believe it wholeheartedly.  I want glimpses of being seen by God.  I want to trust that what I can’t see about our future, God does.  I want peace that we are on the right track.  My girlfriend texted me this line from Shauna Niequist’s book Bittersweet, and it is my prayer today “maybe there’s something I can’t see.  And that’s the core of prayer: admitting that just maybe, there’s something going on that we can’t see.  So when I’m afraid, I pray and ask for God’s help, that I will be able to see something I wasn’t able to see before, or at least trust Him to do the seeing.”  Praying to see and be seen, to banish my invisibility and trust God with what remains to be seen.