Genesis 16:13–14

My evenings aren’t my own.

And honestly… that’s okay.

I get to love my daughters in ways I know many parents would give anything to be able to. I get the flexibility to sit in the parking lot during gymnastics practice, to shuttle them from place to place, to show up in the rhythm of their lives in a way that matters.

I don’t take that lightly.

But if I’m honest, the last few months have been hard.

Life has felt like a continuous cycle of showing up, doing what needs to be done, making things work, and then waking up to do it all over again.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Somewhere along the way, I realized something I didn’t fully have language for at first.

I wasn’t really living.

I was existing.

Not because I don’t love my life. Not because I don’t love my children. But because carrying responsibility day after day without much room to breathe can leave you running on fumes.

Running on empty.

Emotionally.
Spiritually.
Financially.

Empty.

There have been moments where I would look at my life and quietly admit to God, “I need something to shift.” Not something dramatic. Not something performative. Just… something that reminds me I’m still here too.

Still breathing.
Still becoming.
Still seen.

One evening, an event I had been circling in my mind came back across my path. Normally, I would have dismissed it immediately. My evenings are usually already spoken for. But that particular night, my daughter’s father was able to pick her up.

That opened a window.

The only problem was my gas tank.

And the math didn’t really make sense.

I remember sitting with that tension.

Go and risk it… or stay and keep everything “responsible.”

Outside, it was pouring rain.

Inside, I was tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.

And still… something in me was desperate.

Not for entertainment.
Not for distraction.
Not for answers.

I was desperate for a touch.

The kind of touch you don’t really know how to explain, but you know you can’t keep going without it.

Bottom-of-the-barrel-of-miracles kind of desperate.

Like the woman in Scripture who said, “If I can just touch the hem of His garment.”

So I went.

The drive was longer than I wanted it to be. The rain didn’t let up. And I kept having quiet conversations with God in between traffic and doubt and faith all tangled together.

Just get me there.
Just let me feel You.
Just let this not be wasted.

I arrived, the event was called Bibliotherapy.

A night of worship. A night in the Word. A room full of people I didn’t really know, but somehow I knew I was supposed to be there.

I came alone.

I found a seat and settled in with everything I hadn’t fully said out loud yet sitting quietly beneath the surface.

At one point during the night, the speaker asked us to reach under our chairs and pull out a plain mask.

On one side, we were instructed to write what we had overcome, our victories.

On the other side, what was ailing us, the desires that have yet been fulfilled by God, the things we stopped praying for… praying about.

So I wrote.

I wrote about motherhood.
I wrote about provision.
I wrote about the weight of trying to make ends meet.
I wrote about being tired of surviving in cycles that felt like they never fully broke.

I wrote honestly.

Then came the part I wasn’t prepared for.
We were asked to share our masks with the person sitting beside us.

And just like that, what I had written privately became something someone else would now hold.

No time to edit.
No time to soften anything.
No time to curate a stronger version of myself.

So I handed it over.

And she handed hers to me.

For a moment, two lives sat in quiet exchange, no titles, no explanations, just humanity on that mask.

The room continued. Worship carried on. Prayers were prayed. And eventually the evening began to wind down.

I gathered my things, prepared to leave. 

As I was speaking to a couple of folks on my way out, I locked eyes with one of the women who had read my mask.

She approached and simply asked,
“Do you have Cash App?”

I nodded, still unsure what was happening.

I gave her my information.

A few moments later, my phone lit up.

Fifty dollars.

And a Scripture:

Genesis 16:13–14.

She smiled, told me to be blessed, and walked away.

No explanation.
No backstory.
No awareness of what that $50 meant in my actual life.

Because she didn’t know what was sitting in my gas tank.

She didn’t know the mental calculations I had done before deciding to even come.

She didn’t know how close I had felt to empty.

She only knew what I had written on a mask.

But God knew.

And that’s what stayed with me.

Because that moment became something more than provision.

It became recognition.

It became being seen.

And it brought me back to Hagar.

Hagar had been rejected, mistreated, and pushed into isolation. She found herself in the wilderness carrying pain, uncertainty, and responsibility she did not create.

And yet it is there… in the wilderness… that God meets her.

Not after things improve.
Not after clarity arrives.
Not after everything is resolved.

In the wilderness.

And she responds with a name:

“You are the God who sees me.”

Not the God who overlooked me.
Not the God who forgot me.
Not the God who waited until I got it together.

The God who sees me.

And I understand that differently now.

Because there are so many ways to be seen in this world.

Seen for what we produce.
Seen for what we provide.
Seen for how well we hold everything together.

But not always seen in our humanity.
Not always seen in our grief.
Our stretching.
Our rebuilding.
Our quiet prayers.
Our exhaustion.
Our becoming.

And yet… God sees all of it.

What strikes me most about Hagar’s story is that her circumstances didn’t immediately change after that encounter. She still had a journey ahead of her.

But something inside her did change.

Because she knew she had not been abandoned in the middle of it.

That’s the deepest comfort of all.

Not that everything shifts instantly.
But that nothing we walk through is unseen.

There is a well in Scripture called: 

Beer Lahai Roi… “the well of the Living One who sees me.”

A well.

A place of nourishment.
A place you return to for life and refreshment.

And I don’t think it’s accidental that God names it that way.

Because maybe the very places that once felt like wilderness are the same places God intends to turn into wells.

Places where others can come and be reminded that they are not forgotten. Not abandoned. Not overlooked.

The pain teaches compassion.
The wilderness teaches dependence.
Being unseen by people teaches us how to create spaces where others finally feel seen.

So when I look back on that night, I don’t just see a woman receiving $50.
I see a God who saw me before anyone in that room understood what I was carrying.
I see a God who meets people in rain-soaked seasons and empty places.

I drove home that night, in the rain with more than gas in my tank.
I left with the reminder that I had been seen in the very place I felt most empty.
And maybe that’s what Hagar knew too… what it means to be seen in the wilderness.