El Roi

Jeremiah 26:1-29:32

“Do not hold back a word.” Jeremiah 26:2

Today I want to share with you a very powerful mom Truth. This is word for every single mom out there, so feel free to share share share!

God is El Roi – the God who sees me.

Please enjoy this free chapter from my book, “Mommy“.

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“Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away…” Genesis 16:8

Oh, can you relate to Hagar? Do you feel so mistreated that you long to just run away? Do you get so tired of being the one at the bottom of the totem pole… you know, the one at the bottom holding everyone up… and getting ZERO recognition for it. That’s the job description in the classifieds next to “Mommy wanted”! Woman willing to submit to her husband, clean up after and cook for her family, run errands, be a taxi service, juggle the entire family’s social calendar, make sure everyone is fed, clothed appropriately, and has clean faces before they walk out the door, all without a single thank you or even a high five or a way-to-go-Mom. Yes, moms are the unseen glue that holds every family together. We are the ones that make sure our families all walk around looking like movie stars while we look like hell warmed over or Frankenstein’s bride on a good day. Now, don’t get me wrong, when given the time and opportunity we moms clean up pretty well and can generally get down-right hot… but how often do we really get the time AND the opportunity? Plus, if given the choice between a bath and a nap… we usually pick the nap!

Let’s face it being a mom is tough, especially if you’ve spent any time in the work force! Out there, what you do gets seen, it gets recognized, it get acknowledged and sometimes even complimented. Out there you’re somebody with something to offer… in here, your home, you’re just mom. A nobody with nothing to offer. At least that’s what the world says anyway. It amazes me to see from our society’s point of view when it comes to stay-at-home moms. It’s as if, other than child-care for those who do “work”, we have nothing to offer the world at large because they think we’re sitting around eating bon bons all day. But oh how mistaken they are!

There is little more frustrating to a stay-at-home mom than when someone asks her, “So are you working yet?” As in, are you doing something outside the home to earn a paycheck yet? As IF a paycheck defines your worth to society and your family! Hardly! Just look at Hagar! She had been Sarai’s faithful handmaiden for years, was her friend and confidante through a lot of Sarai’s marital turmoil and childlessness. Hagar was there through it all. Then Sarai gets the bright idea to take matters into her own hands and gives Hagar to her husband Abram as a wife. Hagar gets pregnant and a little cocky around Sarai and so Sarai starts getting downright mean to Hagar… as if it was somehow Hagar’s fault that Sarai was barren and unhappy. Not able to take the abuse Sarai was handing out, Hagar fled from her. And that is where we find today’s opening verse. “The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert;” Genesis 16:7 Notice it doesn’t say “an” angel of the LORD, but “the” angel of the LORD. Honey, she saw a pre-incarnate Jesus! THE One and Only! And then, better yet, what does it say next? Found. Jesus found her, you usually only say you found something when you’ve been looking for it because it is somewhere it’s not supposed to be. You know, like “I found your shoe… in the middle of the livingroom floor… when I tripped over it!”

Hagar had not been treated with the respect she deserved and she ran away from where she was supposed to be, where God wanted her. So He Himself came looking for her, and asked her “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” He knew the answers to both of those questions! But did she? Do you? Today in this moment I’m finding myself in Hagar’s sandals with the LORD sitting at the foot of my bed as I write – literally having run away from my family – saying to me “Tamar, mother of Anna and Gabe and wife of Sean, where have you come from and where are you going?” Sometimes it’s just so hard to keep going, to keep moving, to keep doing all these meaningless things that no one sees or thanks me for! Who in their right mind would want to spend 18+ years of their life sweeping up dropped Cheerios and wiping noses??? OK, well I suppose that it wouldn’t be 18 solid years of those things, eventually they grow up to wipe their own noses and stop dropping quite so many Cheerios, but right now it certainly doesn’t feel like it will ever end!

Lord, it’s so hard when even my husband doesn’t acknowledge the things that I do for our family! I feel so invisible, so insignificant, so… dust-like.

“Then the angel of the LORD told her, ‘Go back to your mistress and submit to her.'” Genesis 16:9

Siiiiiigh…. Yes Lord. I will continue to serve my thankless family, for YOU.

“The angel added, ‘I will so increase you descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” Genesis 16:10

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Please Lord, I know that children are a blessing, and I believe that, but please, no more babies!!! I’ve got enough on my plate right now the way that it is!!!!!

“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

Lord THANK YOU!!!!! Thank you that all those things that I do for my family that they never see and never acknowledge, YOU see them and YOU acknowledge them! Thank you that the little details that I put into mothering are not COMPLETELY un-noticed, rather they are simply un-discovered by the ones for whom they are intended for. Thank you Father that you see me in my occasionally abused state and You validate my pain. You ease my suffering. You give me purpose. Thank You Lord that you are El Roi, the God who sees me, and everything that I do.