It has been months, seems like forever really since I have written. Every time I thought about it, had the desire to write, I was pulled away by someone or something; weather it be the kids, work, or my own sheer laziness - I just didn't allow myself to sit down and write. I did not allow myself opportunity to let the words escape from my brain and fall onto the keyboard and be transformed into the thoughts you now read on this page. Allowing for there to be a build-up of clutter and wandering thoughts with in the walls of my mind. There has been so much to write about these past few months and God has taught me some big and valuable lessons this summer - in fact He still is; and it is the most current of lessons that leads me to write tonight.
We often say we know someone, know who they really are. But do we? Just what is it that we think we really know? Is anyone truly capable of knowing someone the way I believe only God does know us? As parents we hope we know our children, I hope and think that I do; but do I? Do I know what I want to know or see? Or do I merely know what they want me to know or see? What do their friends see when they look at them? What do their parents see when they watch, as they make choices both good and bad in their lives? What do they see in us? Especially when the choices are more on the bad side of things. The kind of choices that bring pain and suffering to those around them. Do they see a good kid making a bad choice? Or do they see a bad kid? How do they see us as parents? Do they think we didn't try hard enough, lacked authority, or just lost control? Or worse yet, just don't care? What do they see? Do they think they know us?
As I have shared many times before, I grew up in a very dysfunctional household and when all hell broke loose and everything hit the fan - I often wondered what people really thought? What did they say within the walls of their homes, behind the closed front door. Did they talk about thinking they knew me? Or my family for that matter? Did they try to solve the destruction that had become our lives? I doubt it, and from what my own mind allows me to recall, not too many people said much of anything. There were instead the occasional whispers, but most often there was a lack of eye contact; if people thought they knew me, they certainly didn't act like they wanted to know me.
I know what your going through. Or better yet, I know how you feel. These are great sentiments, but often they are said by someone who doesn't have a clue, who couldn't possibly know you, or your situation. I don't know how many times people in my life have said something similar to one of these phrases. My own mother said to me once when our wounds were still so very fresh; she said "We are all hurting, you need to remember that you are not the only one who is hurting here" (this is of coarse to the best of my memory)
This made me so very angry and for one of the very few times as a teen, I yelled at my mother. " I know we are all hurting, but no one is hurting the way that I am hurting, no one knows what it feels like to be me." She didn't know me then and sadly she still doesn't today. I would learn years later, that she actually did know my pain, which made it all the harder to understand why she didn't know what I needed to feel better, to feel even a little bit whole after all I had been through.
Often when people don't know you, it is because you don't know yourself. And when you struggle to know you, you make it harder for them to see the you whom you really are. Some of us, then turn to anything and everything to try and find what were are looking for. To be able to look in the mirror and like what we see; to look in the mirror and be able to say "I know you. I know your face" It is in the moments that we can do that, to recognize ourselves that others will recognize us too. That will allow them to see past the "I'm fine" and to instead ask what they can pray about for us, pray with us for that matter. My own children proved that they have learned this themselves, that they indeed know me, their mother.
Recently I had had an off day, an old ghost was heavy in my thoughts and I just couldn't shake it. I tried to put on face, to be OK, to do what needed to be done. (It was a happy time for crying out loud, I didn't need to be feeling sorry for myself) Within an hour of each other, with next to no interaction with me or each other - two of my kids asked me if I was OK. Weather it was my face or my body language that had betrayed me, they knew. They knew something was wrong, because they knew me, they knew my face.
I just heard the phrase "I know your face" tonight. I was having a good conversation with a dear friend and she mentioned it towards the end of our evening. She shared a moment from the movie it was from and we both agreed it means so much more than the obvious, its not just about knowing someones "face" per-say, but knowing them, about knowing their soul, truly knowing their inner most being. It's about knowing when something is wrong with that certain someone. And then its about understanding what your supposed to do about it. Prayers for wisdom to know such answers never come in the time or fashion we would hope for. But instead are hidden in the linings of conversations, packed away in a lost box that is not meant to be found until; well until its meant to be found. God is kind of funny that way.
He knows our face, and each and every hair on our head.
Jeremiah 1:5a Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
Psalm 139:13-14 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful I know that full well.
He knows your face, He knows your inner most being, the depths of your very soul. Will you allow Him to not only know you, but to teach you to know you too?
