You’re Not Invisible
It suddenly occurred to me that you as a parent spend your day not only taking care of yourself and grown up responsibilities such as bills, grocery shopping, car maintenance, cleaning, walking the dumb dog you never wanted in the first place, etc…but you also spend endless hours taking care of your high school student. The thing that makes this interesting is that most likely your high school student is only aware of about %15 of the stuff you do for them. They have no idea the lists that you make all throughout the day to make sure they have all that they need for school, sports, dance etc. They have no idea that you stare at your monthly budget constantly trying to figure out how you are going to pay for their college. They are barely aware of the fact that if it wasn’t for you, the house would literally get swallowed up by their clothes, books, random junk and soap scum. You could have the most well behaved, grateful high school student on the planet, but they still don’t have a clue how much time and energy you put into them every day.
I imagine that it might be easy to feel invisible. Feeling invisible is horrible. Going unnoticed can feel like you just received a greeting card that said, “Oh hey…You don’t matter.” As I was thinking about this, I couldn’t help but want to send you a giant hug through edlstudents.com and tell you that…YOU. ARE. NOT. INVISIBLE.
God sees you. He sees every minute of how you love and sacrifice for your kids. He sees your actions, your fears, your exhaustion, your frustration. He sees you. So take a deep breath and sit in the presence of a God who is profoundly aware of you.
Psalm 139 (Paraphrase: The Message)
God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!
Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.
Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.
Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
