The God Who Sees Me

In my posting last week, I found this post - written and ready to publish - sitting as a draft on my dashboard. I wrote it the week after Mother's Day and forgot to post it. Can't let a post go to waste, and even though Mother's Day was a month ago, the beauty of the moment hasn't faded. So here it is.


It's no secret that motherhood is hard. From the first days home, new moms find out they really didn't know the extent of the responsibility, hard work, or absolute love. And even though the workload of motherhood is not a secret, we live as if it is.

The Saturday before Mother's Day 2017, my great day ended a little bit in the dumps. At the end of a long week and dealing with the unique stress of parenting teenagers, with thoughts of what Mother's Day is all about swirling in my head, I felt unnoticed and unappreciated as a mother. Not guilty over what I do and don't do - simply unnoticed for what I do. It is perhaps the biggest sacrifice of motherhood, to continue on whether or not anyone seems to notice or appreciate your efforts. 

In an effort to ease these feelings, my husband posted a sweet picture of us and our great day together that Saturday to social media. Honestly though, by then my long week and stress were joined by the comparison trap - myself to others. Knowing this kind of thinking takes me nowhere but down has never stopped me from following the spiral previously, but somewhere in a corner of my mind I paused to whisper a five second prayer, "God show me I'm noticed." Because in a world where we are all aching to be noticed in some way, Truth says there is One who always notices, whether we feel it in the moment or not. 

By Sunday morning quite a few posts had popped up on social media feeds, some people I barely know, detailing acknowledgement of mothers for everything they do and everything they are. Of course, we love to see such women acknowledged, but mixed with our admiration, we need to be aware of feeding the comparison trap as well. The best way to combat something so strong is to make the choice to step out in front of it, put your foot down, and say, "This will proceed no further." Already a step ahead of myself in taking the thought and feeling captive, wanting my loved ones to know I appreciate all they do as moms, I had filled out cards, mailed personalized notes, and sent messages a few days before Mother's Day. As God has aptly shown me in the past year, and to paraphrase Ann Voskamp, to live in your brokenness - given out to others - is to allow God to turn your brokenness to good, to perhaps even heal your own brokenness.

Getting ready to attend my sister's church for her son's baby dedication the morning of Mother's Day, I received a text from my 15-year-old daughter to make sure I come into the house when I pick them up at grandma's (where they had spent the night). I told her daddy was coming, I was still getting ready, and why did she need me to come anyway? Her reply: It's for Mother's Day.

I showed up to my daughter and a beautiful, body length blanket she had stayed up until 4am - working six hours - to make for me for Mother's Day. I had gone to bed at 3am after my husband and I spent 12 hours away, driving our oldest home from a prom she attended an hour and a half away, quite mindful of that crazy bedtime hour with so much going on the next day. And here, my younger daughter had stayed up even later than that, sacrificing for me in the moment I was sacrificing for someone else?! The absolute feeling of being loved washed over me. The fabric is a heavy, ultra soft fleece - combining my love of warm blankets and dachshunds all at once. Plus, my mother-in-law had not only taken her to the store, but also purchased the materials needed for it to happen. Double the love.

And it hit me while singing "I surrender all..." in church half an hour later, God had heard my five second prayer the night before. I had sent it up in a quick moment, with barely the faith of a mustard seed and little thought of it afterward, and it came back to me in complete blessing. My child noticed me. My husband gave me a beautiful card - he had noticed me.

At lunch that afternoon I received a card from my sister, a new mother celebrating her first Mother's Day. It began with the words, "You might feel like no one notices..." and had a hand written note inside praising me and stating admiration that just blew me away. I struggled not to cry in my seat as I read it. I gave her a hug, told her the card was perfect, and spent a good meal with my family, loving on my nephew.


Back home after lunch, my youngest and only son approached me with a hand made and perfectly worded (all by himself!) Mother's Day card...complete with a stuffed dachshund (notice a pattern here?). The stuffed animal had been hidden in his closet for a month, waiting for today. Grandma helped him plan it.


Dinner was spent at a local Hibachi place with my in-laws, their treat. What a great meal, filled with laughter, and some of the precious little time we are all together at once. Complete with a beautiful card claiming things about me that I don't always believe about myself from my niece and nephew. A friend of mine, who didn't know of my specific feelings as a mother at the moment, but knew the challenges the weekend presented with my kids, schedule, and other conflicts, checked in with me a couple times to see how the days and events had gone. To top if off, my oldest daughter and I made it through a whole weekend of events we would potentially fight about without fighting! Even when I messed up her graduation invitations by forgetting to put the date and had to affix the date to each invite with an obviously added-on label made by a label-maker.

By the end of the day, so much unexpected love and appreciation had been poured upon me from my family; but, I'm unsure some of them realize exactly what they did for me. What I do know is today was more than the usual Mother's Day. Mother's Day up until now had been like any other day for me. I've received cards and gifts on past Mother's Days, so how was this one so different?

In my heart, I knew I was noticed. By the end of the day, it was more than just my family who noticed, it was God. I didn't try to find or manipulate anything or anyone for attention, I handed over the negative feeling, and I asked for Him to show me I was noticed and He made it abundantly clear that He had seen me all along. So clear that all the public posts in the world boasting praise of my motherhood couldn't compare. What else matters when you know in your heart God sees you? When you know the very people who make you a mother, wife, daughter, sister, and best friend see you.


"She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me.'" Genesis 16:13

My nephew Maximus

When a Girl Chooses to Realize...

In November I wrote a post called "Set Apart,"in which I discussed how my journey into my PhD often felt like because I had to give up things, or things changed on me, that I was being set aside. Yet, through prayer, Bible reading, and great encouraging Christian writers (namely Lysa Terkeurst in this case), I knew there was more to it. That I wasn't being set aside, but set apart for God's greater purpose. 

Here, now, with my first full year of my PhD officially wrapped up (and the second semester easier than the first), the feeling of being set aside continues to pop up...it has become much more personal and has been an impossibly hard thing that, mixed with my insecurities and worry, has tried to take me down. Besides feeling left out, there is nothing quite like looking in on something from the outside when you used to be the one on the inside. Especially when you didn't realize quite how on the outside you had become. I know there will never be a time where we are completely free of such trials and challenges, but I'd hoped to have made an inroad on this particular challenge by now.

It's glorious to think that in the midst of heartache, God has a purpose and calling for it. To think that the things we feel left out of may just serve to set us apart so we can prepare for a new purpose. But in the moment it just seems impossible...how in the world can this feeling mean good things on the horizon?

Today, as I experienced this yet again, in the midst of an otherwise happy day, Lysa TerKeurst's original phrase came to me in the aftermath of feelings:

"There is something wonderfully sacred that happens when a girl chooses to realize that being 'set aside' is actually God's call for her to be 'set apart.' This is true.

To be set aside is to be rejected. To be set apart is to be given an assignment that requires preparation.

Embrace the preparation. And remember you are set apart, beautiful one. Chosen. Adored. And reserved for a high and holy calling."

I've read those words so many times - I have "set apart" tattooed on my arm to remind me for goodness' sake! But let me tell you, you can tattoo yourself into a rainbow of beautiful, catchy phrases and reminders, but it will mean nothing until God sinks it into your heart. 

As I drove away with a wrench in my heart, replaying the hurt, Terkeurst's words running through my mind, it hit me. The key words in TerKeurst's phrase aren't "set apart" - the key words are "when a girl chooses to realize..." 

The set apart piece is God's truth - it is what it is. But I have to choose to believe and trust in that truth to activate it in my life or I will go nowhere with it. If I do not stand up and literally choose to believe and trust, the hurt will continue to hurt and the next time will feel worse, and the time after that will be devastating. And the moment will come again - there's always a next time. Choice is the key - choosing to stop, take a deep breath, state what you know to be true, and pray. The next time, the hurt will be less and it will be easier to choose, and maybe a few times after that the situation will cease to wreck my heart at all...because I will know that I am not set aside, but set apart. 

So today, with the stinging still in my heart, I am choosing to believe I am not set aside, but that I am set apart. I trust that, that place I used to inhabit, but now feel set aside from, will come to serve a fresh and new purpose in the future God is shaping for me. And if not, that I have served that place and people well in the time God chose for me to inhabit it.

He who has eyes to see, let him see and he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

#setapart #higheranddeeper #koinonia #eucharisteo #nothingtolose #everythingtogain

Begin the Week with Words

This weekend was a doozy! We traveled two hours from home to attend a music festival called Alive in Mineral City, Ohio. We spent the first day with things going wrong and the entire second day in the rain. And I mean every single minute in the rain. By the time we hit dinner we decided not to come back for the evening bands, which is a shame because they were what we came for. But it was so miserable...and every time we parked in their lots (aka fields + rain = mud pits) we got stuck and my dad had to pull us out with his truck. Every time = more than once.

I was really looking forward to this trip, especially after the rough start we've had to summer, it was very disappointing. However, I sit at the hotel pool this Saturday night, watching two of my three kids swim, with my husband at my side, and I'm reminded of Ann Voskamp's teachings about Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving in all things, with joy and grace as a result. And I recall these quotes from her book One Thousand Gifts:

"Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant—a seed—this plants the giant miracle." Voskamp

“I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.” Voskamp

And I know I have to find the good moments and focus on those, because anything else is a thief of joy. And why be an enabler to that?

I also want to share one very cool moment from this past week, an addition I had done to my shoulder tattoo, which goes along with one last Voskamp quote. Consider it one for the road:

"When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?" Voskamp 

Wording and blue flower at end of "Eucharisteo" are original
tattoo from 2013.