I stretched myself into my bed, weighted blanket pulled up, wrapping my heart, heavy and tired. I felt exhausted. Angry. Bombarded…by all the opinions in my head.
Parenting is hard. And there are so many good ways to parent…how do I know I am choosing the right one?
How do I know that the instant decisions I’m forced to make over and over and over every single day are the right ones? The best ones?
So often I know, I know they aren’t. I apologize over and over. I snap and yell and rant again and again, and then must circle back to asking forgiveness.
I try this. Then that. I say one thing Then I change my mind and try a different vein of logic or type of consequence or chose a rewards system or give simply let it slide because I don’t know what I’m doing.
Maybe you hear them too? The dozens of voices. Opinions. Loud and demanding and, unfortunately, contradictory.
How do I know I’m listening to the right one?
And I can feel the them rising…the voices. Slowly louder and louder in my head. Crushing me with their volume and their weight.
Do this…not that. If you do this, you will hurt them… If you don’t do this, you teach them bad habits… This is kinder… This is wiser… This is effective… This is better for the long haul… This is practical… This is for their heart… ..and I am drowning in the voices.
But suddenly, in my head but not from within it, His voice speaks above the din. Softly. As if nearest to me out of them all.
“Don’t listen to them, listen to me.”
And I realize that somehow I thought His voice was there, in the chorus and chaos of voices in my head. I somehow thought His voice was among them, shouting at me with judgement, with fear, with shame.
I forget that His voice is different. His voice is outside of the crowd. Separate. And only in turning the crowd of opinions down, will I be able to hear His voice, firm and safe. A steady place to rest my heart and mind. A safe bottom to plant my anchor.
The steady thrum of options and opinions isn’t necessary to my parenting.
Being guided by the Holy Spirit is necessary to my parenting.
So I’ll lay my anxious heart down tonight, a little easier. My head will be a little quieter. And my mind and heart will repeat this simple prayer.
God, let me see my children with Your eyes and Your heart. Let me hear Your voice and let my heart be sensitive to Your touch. Give me Your wisdom and strength and grace as I parent, and the humility to allow myself to be parented by You in the process.
We sat in a the living room, scattered on couches and kitchen chairs and higher up counter stools, worshipping. As the last notes of the song hung on, our pastor invited us to worship God by proclaiming His name.
In the stillness that followed, His Names rang out from different lips.
Healer Mighty to Save Yahweh Redeemer The Lamb Who Was Slain God With Us Wonderful Counselor
One name jumped out at me, and I think it did the same for many others, because a murmur of worship and agreement ran through the room.
The God Who Sees Me
It was as if a breath of air that had been held inside me for too long rushed out all at once.
The God Who Sees Me
The God Who Sees Me
The God Who Sees Me
He sees me. He sees my heart. He sees my struggles and my pain. He sees my joy and my passion. He sees my desires and my longings. He sees my light and my darkness. He sees my mind and the battles fought within it. He sees me.
He sees me, and still, He loves me.
And isn’t that the very deepest longing and desire of my heart? Isn’t that the thing that drives much of my stress and anxiety? Isn’t that the thing that informs so many of my choices and actions? The desire to be fully and completely known and understood. To simultaneously be completely known and completely accepted.
Isn’t that what I am constantly working toward in my marriage and in my friendships, and yet is always illusively out of grasp?
Because as humans, for all our trying, we will never be able to fully and perfectly comprehend every aspect of another person. We can never be perfectly known and comprehended because we don’t even know and understand our own selves well enough to help another understand us completely.
But God.
But God is not another human. He is not equal to us in understanding of ourselves. He is beyond that. He is our creator.
He understands us in a way that we cannot even understand ourselves.
He fashioned us with purpose and uniqueness and intention and beauty, and sometimes it seems as though our whole lives are taken up with uncovering that how that purpose is to be lived out in the practicality of the day-to-day.
I looked up this name of God today.
El Roi
The God Who Sees Me
And I found that this name for God is only used once in the Bible. It was used by Hagar, Sarai’s maidservant, when she ran away.
God saw her in her affliction from Sarai. He saw her in her hardness of heart toward Sarai. He saw her in her desperation. He saw her in her humanity.
And He didn’t give her an easy out. He told her to go back, to go back to her harsh mistress and submit. He told her to go back, knowing that much later she would be sent away. He told her to go back her place of shame and mistreatment. He told her to go back to slavery and servitude.
But He also told her that He had heard her, and that He had a plan for her and her son.
And her response was this.
“So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are a God of seeing,’ for she said, ‘Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.’” Genesis 13:16
She did not even know His name, but she knew that He had seen her. That He had deeply seen and understood her. Something in her brief interaction with God convinced her to obey. Convinced her that He was good. Convinced her that she was deeply seen and understood. Convinced her that she was protected.
And she obeyed.
She went back to the place of her hurt. She went back to the place of her disgrace. She went back to the place that would require her ultimate submission and sacrifice.
She went back because she knew that He saw her. He knew her. He heard her. He loved her. He was looking after her.
What places would I go unafraid if I realized how deeply He knows me? How fully He sees me? How faithfully He hears me? How wholly He looks after me? How completely He loves me?
He is The God Who Sees Me.
I want to let that truth sit deeply in me. I want it to push into the deep places of my heart and mind. I want it reshape my heart and my actions. I want it to inform my every thought and desire.
I want to live from the understanding that He is The God Who Sees Me.
We sat in a the living room, scattered on couches and kitchen chairs and higher up counter stools, worshipping. As the last notes of the song hung on, our pastor invited us to worship God by proclaiming His name.
In the stillness that followed, His Names rang out from different lips.
Healer Mighty to Save Yahweh Redeemer The Lamb Who Was Slain God With Us Wonderful Counselor
One name jumped out at me, and I think it did the same for many others, because a murmur of worship and agreement ran through the room.
The God Who Sees Me
It was as if a breath of air that had been held inside me for too long rushed out all at once.
The God Who Sees Me
The God Who Sees Me
The God Who Sees Me
He sees me. He sees my heart. He sees my struggles and my pain. He sees my joy and my passion. He sees my desires and my longings. He sees my light and my darkness. He sees my mind and the battles fought within it. He sees me.
He sees me, and still, He loves me.
And isn’t that the very deepest longing and desire of my heart? Isn’t that the thing that drives much of my stress and anxiety? Isn’t that the thing that informs so many of my choices and actions? The desire to be fully and completely known and understood. To simultaneously be completely known and completely accepted.
Isn’t that what I am constantly working toward in my marriage and in my friendships, and yet is always illusively out of grasp?
Because as humans, for all our trying, we will never be able to fully and perfectly comprehend every aspect of another person. We can never be perfectly known and comprehended because we don’t even know and understand our own selves well enough to help another understand us completely.
But God.
But God is not another human. He is not equal to us in understanding of ourselves. He is beyond that. He is our creator.
He understands us in a way that we cannot even understand ourselves.
He fashioned us with purpose and uniqueness and intention and beauty, and sometimes it seems as though our whole lives are taken up with uncovering that how that purpose is to be lived out in the practicality of the day-to-day.
I looked up this name of God today.
El Roi
The God Who Sees Me
And I found that this name for God is only used once in the Bible. It was used by Hagar, Sarai’s maidservant, when she ran away.
God saw her in her affliction from Sarai. He saw her in her hardness of heart toward Sarai. He saw her in her desperation. He saw her in her humanity.
And He didn’t give her an easy out. He told her to go back, to go back to her harsh mistress and submit. He told her to go back, knowing that much later she would be sent away. He told her to go back her place of shame and mistreatment. He told her to go back to slavery and servitude.
But He also told her that He had heard her, and that He had a plan for her and her son.
And her response was this.
“So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are a God of seeing,’ for she said, ‘Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.’” Genesis 13:16
She did not even know His name, but she knew that He had seen her. That He had deeply seen and understood her. Something in her brief interaction with God convinced her to obey. Convinced her that He was good. Convinced her that she was deeply seen and understood. Convinced her that she was protected.
And she obeyed.
She went back to the place of her hurt. She went back to the place of her disgrace. She went back to the place that would require her ultimate submission and sacrifice.
She went back because she knew that He saw her. He knew her. He heard her. He loved her. He was looking after her.
What places would I go unafraid if I realized how deeply He knows me? How fully He sees me? How faithfully He hears me? How wholly He looks after me? How completely He loves me?
He is The God Who Sees Me.
I want to let that truth sit deeply in me. I want it to push into the deep places of my heart and mind. I want it reshape my heart and my actions. I want it to inform my every thought and desire.
I want to live from the understanding that He is The God Who Sees Me.
I’m a chronic hider. Or perhaps runner is a better description.
Thoughts bubble deep inside me, difficult to hear and even harder to admit. So I run; I hide.
I hide from myself.
I never knew it was possible to hide from your own thoughts, your own conscience. But I find myself doing it nearly every day for stretches of days and weeks and sometimes months longer than I want to admit.
In truth, I’m not hiding from myself; I’m hiding from God.
I’m hiding from that still, small voice calling me into the hard places deep inside my own self. The ugly places. The tainted places. The places that reveal who I most truly am apart from Him.
And still, I search His Word daily, eager to hear His voice, or so I think. I ask for Him to speak. I ask for Him to reveal Himself to me. And then I ignore the deep down whisper of conviction, His voice whispering into the places of shame and discouragement and rebellion and sin.
My emotions go up and down from day to day or perhaps even hour to hour. Life beats on and He graciously teaches and grows me, yet all the while there is the quiet unrest deep down. That nagging sense that I need to change, that I need to slow down and listen.
So I speed up. I fill up my mind with noise. Even good noise. Podcasts, books, movies, music, and conversation, anything to block out the quiet. Even Bible reading and worship music and deep conversations, as long as I don’t go so deep that I hit the nagging. Because when I am quiet, when my mind is still, the depths of my mind come welling up and with them the whispers of His call.
His call to surrender. His call to face my struggles. His call to reckon with my own sinfulness. His call to see whatever it is He is bringing to light in me that He desires to change. That He desires to free me from.
And if it is “for freedom Christ has set us free”, then why do I hold so tightly to the chains of my sin?
(Galatians 5:1)
Why do I “submit again to a yoke of slavery”?
Why do I run and hide and distract and drown out His voice when He whispers my name with freedom in His intention?
Why do I refuse to let Him reveal my sin so that He can break the chains with which it binds me?
Why do I restrain Him from revealing the depths of my sinners heart?
And the apostle Paul’s words ring clear and true in my heart…
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Romans 7:24-25
But when I do allow stillness to steal over my mind, when I do allow my wandering mind to follow that nagging deep within, when I do listen to that whisper that uncovers my sin, I am freed.
Because Paul immediately follows his declaration of struggle and reliance on Jesus with this proclamation of freedom.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1
Because my deepest, most shameful struggles are forgiven. The strongholds of my heart were already conquered by him. The sins I refuse to see in myself were paid for on the cross.
The chains of sin that I hold tightly simply because I don’t want to admit them are already known and wiped clean.
Every bond, every stronghold of sin in my heart and mind was already broken by the blood of Christ.
He has given me forgiveness and freedom and has given it abundantly, if only I will humble myself to live in the freedom He has given.
So I’m practicing. I’m practicing the intentional slowing down, the intentional stilling of my own mind. I’m leaning into the painful places. I’m learning to take note of that nagging deep down, of His still whisper in the places I least want to hear it. And I’m noting the things I do to drown it.
And I’m taking it all to His feet where it belongs. His feet bearing the scars of payment for these places.
I’m a chronic hider. Or perhaps runner is a better description.
Thoughts bubble deep inside me, difficult to hear and even harder to admit. So I run; I hide.
I hide from myself.
I never knew it was possible to hide from your own thoughts, your own conscience. But I find myself doing it nearly every day for stretches of days and weeks and sometimes months longer than I want to admit.
In truth, I’m not hiding from myself; I’m hiding from God.
I’m hiding from that still, small voice calling me into the hard places deep inside my own self. The ugly places. The tainted places. The places that reveal who I most truly am apart from Him.
And still, I search His Word daily, eager to hear His voice, or so I think. I ask for Him to speak. I ask for Him to reveal Himself to me. And then I ignore the deep down whisper of conviction, His voice whispering into the places of shame and discouragement and rebellion and sin.
My emotions go up and down from day to day or perhaps even hour to hour. Life beats on and He graciously teaches and grows me, yet all the while there is the quiet unrest deep down. That nagging sense that I need to change, that I need to slow down and listen.
So I speed up. I fill up my mind with noise. Even good noise. Podcasts, books, movies, music, and conversation, anything to block out the quiet. Even Bible reading and worship music and deep conversations, as long as I don’t go so deep that I hit the nagging. Because when I am quiet, when my mind is still, the depths of my mind come welling up and with them the whispers of His call.
His call to surrender. His call to face my struggles. His call to reckon with my own sinfulness. His call to see whatever it is He is bringing to light in me that He desires to change. That He desires to free me from.
And if it is “for freedom Christ has set us free”, then why do I hold so tightly to the chains of my sin?
(Galatians 5:1)
Why do I “submit again to a yoke of slavery”?
Why do I run and hide and distract and drown out His voice when He whispers my name with freedom in His intention?
Why do I refuse to let Him reveal my sin so that He can break the chains with which it binds me?
Why do I restrain Him from revealing the depths of my sinners heart?
And the apostle Paul’s words ring clear and true in my heart…
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Romans 7:24-25
But when I do allow stillness to steal over my mind, when I do allow my wandering mind to follow that nagging deep within, when I do listen to that whisper that uncovers my sin, I am freed.
Because Paul immediately follows his declaration of struggle and reliance on Jesus with this proclamation of freedom.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1
Because my deepest, most shameful struggles are forgiven. The strongholds of my heart were already conquered by him. The sins I refuse to see in myself were paid for on the cross.
The chains of sin that I hold tightly simply because I don’t want to admit them are already known and wiped clean.
Every bond, every stronghold of sin in my heart and mind was already broken by the blood of Christ.
He has given me forgiveness and freedom and has given it abundantly, if only I will humble myself to live in the freedom He has given.
So I’m practicing. I’m practicing the intentional slowing down, the intentional stilling of my own mind. I’m leaning into the painful places. I’m learning to take note of that nagging deep down, of His still whisper in the places I least want to hear it. And I’m noting the things I do to drown it.
And I’m taking it all to His feet where it belongs. His feet bearing the scars of payment for these places.
