I hung up the phone, my heart breaking over the story I’d just heard.
Another woman.
Another daughter,
wife,
mother.
Another congregant who thought she could trust her pastor with her vulnerabilities, questions, and insecurities.
She couldn’t.
What was shared out of a place of need was exploited.
Her questions became his open door.
Her vulnerability became his game plan.
Her naivete became his free pass.
Until she was entangled,
trapped,
imprisoned...
by the very one who was supposed to point her toward Jesus.
Another woman with someone else’s shame hung around her neck,
someone else’s scarlet letter burning white hot in her chest
a community's confusion and heartbreak levied against her.
Another woman, weeping and shattered, asking “Where is God?”
My heart aches. Familiar tears well up in my eyes. Then, a memory.
The pages of my bible rustle as I flip back almost to the beginning, the earliest chapters holding the story of another woman.
A woman who was used,
abused,
and utterly alone.
And at her lowest—on the run, outcast, and afraid—she encountered God.
He came after her.
He called her by name. Hagar.
And He SAW her.
He didn’t shame her or avoid her or bully her. He met her with kindness and grace and such a loving sense of His presence that from then on, she called Him by a new name: “the God Who Sees Me.”
The God Who Sees Me
To God, Hagar was a daughter worth tending in her grief. A daughter He called by name. A daughter worth a new beginning, a legacy, a blessing.
And so am I.
And so is my friend on the phone.
And so are YOU.
I long for the day when the bullies stop bullying, when users stop using, when pastors stop abusing their position and their parishioners. But until then, it does my heart good to remember that we are not forgotten. We are SEEN by the One who loves us completely.
Your pain is not invisible.
Your cries do not go unheard.
Your abandonment has not escaped His notice.
You are worth fighting for, worth running after, worth the pursuit of the One who is truer than we know.
And that makes all the difference.