{Be Real} He Sees You

As I write this, I’m sitting alone in a room by a single lightbulb, sipping pumpkin coffee and listening to my family playing games, laughing and talking outside my door.

It’s almost the New Year – and the first theme for Delight in 2015 is “Community.”

How appropriate.  Most of us have just spent a lot of time with family and friends, experienced a lot of closeness.  I’m listening to the sound of community – and I know that closeness brings joy, and it brings pain.  I know the sting.  Community has brought me pain this year, but in that place I have met God closer.  I think this exactly the place to begin talking about it.  It’s where I’d begin if we just sat down together for a cup of coffee.

Community can show us the pain of loneliness.

And on this Monday, morning, I want you to know that you’re not alone.

You’re not alone that time, you know, when you are talking with someone and they are looking right through you.  That time you have a discussion and are dying to discuss something meaningful, and every word stays on the surface, while your heart stays alone in its depths.  Or that time you join a new group with so much hope and expectation, and in the car ride home you sigh, feeling disappointed.  I’m with you, sister.

I know this disappointment with community doesn’t just happen in secular settings, girls.  It happens in bible studies and in church community.  Places supposed to bring Jesus and healing and they stay on the surface and you feel not known, and not seen.

It’s a human struggle.  We all desire to be seen and known.  That’s what love is.  Being seen and known, accepted, invited, desired, pursued, and worthy of sacrifice.  God creates us to need this kind of love.

I formed a strong desire to be seen and known as a young girl.  I grew up in a house with lots of strong personalities.  I never had a strong will – I was compliant, and a classic definition of a “good girl.”  I desired harmony and peace even more than having my voice heard.  So I shrunk back a lot.  And somewhere along the line, I really started believing that my voice didn’t matter as much.  My happiness and joy depended on other people being happy.  And so, consequently, I did not feel seen – because truthfully?  I didn’t even see myself.   I looked everywhere for cues on how to act, everywhere but inside of myself.

This carried over onto how I acted in community.  I shrunk back a lot, and felt alone.  Years later, I realized I hadn’t taken the time to discover my own voice, and really love myself.  When we don’t love ourselves, it creates a deeper need in us that no community can ever fulfill.

By the grace of God, I love myself now. But I still feel a need to be seen and known. There are depths inside me that cry out, at times, and long to connect with other people.

I know I’m not alone in this.  I know that you have dreams, hopes, desires – that sometimes you hold inside.  And even in community, there are places you don’t feel understood.  There are people that don’t show you that you matter, and who don’t kindle the fires in your heart.  There are times we feel so connected, and other times, we feel this ache, this loneliness, coming right back in like an old friend.  The kind of loneliness where we can be in a room full of people, and still feel alone.

It’s ironic.  When we feel the most alone, we need to get alone with God.

We need to remember that He knows us and loves us completely.  In that depth, in that moment, He is there.

One of my favorite verses is Psalm 139:

 

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know my sitting down and my rising up;

You understand my thought afar off.

You comprehend my path and my lying down,

And are acquainted with all my ways…

How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God!”

 

The Lord knows us that completely, and that intimately.  Our desires, our thoughts, our fears, our hopes, our joys, our sorrows, our weaknesses, our strengths.  And he loves every part of us.

Here’s the truth, sisters: we need to come into community with the wholeness that we are known completely and loved completely by God.

Because every community is broken.  We are all broken.  We all need love and acceptance and just, Jesus.  The more we are full of the Lord and His love, the more that love will cover our brokenness, and others’ brokenness.

God gives us people as gifts – gifts to show us more of His face and His love here on earth.  And we are absolutely supposed to seek Godly community, people that meet us in the depths and encourage us to grow in our relationship with God.  We’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks.

But let’s always remember to seek His face first, His love first, and love ourselves first.  To fill ourselves first with Jesus and let that love seep into every one of our cracks, so we are ready to overflow.

I’m excited to explore community more with you, sister.  If you have any questions or something you’d like to talk about this month, please feel free to comment below!  I pray that Delight has become a sweet community for you and a place you can just breathe and feel at rest, and at home.  I wish we could be sitting together drinking coffee, so I could hold your hands and listen to your dreams for the coming year and remind you that you are not alone.

Our Lord sees you.  He knows you.  And He loves you, completely.

 

“I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

-Ephesians 3:14,17-19

“The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

And His ears are open to their cry.”

-Psalm 34:15