Women’s Ministries

Being Known December 4, 2009

article by Melissa Twitchell/ photo by Christiana Childers

Well, God continues to show me how much He loves me in some of the most ordinary and simple ways but also in the most extraordinary ways.

I have felt extremely isolated in the last couple of months. Like Becky, I am new to the area so my long-time friends and family are far away. I also work remotely for a health care system in Oregon, so the people I work with are long distance too.

I started to focus on how lonely I was feeling. I cried about it several times.  With the baby coming, I didn’t see any new opportunities for relationship building in the near future and my existing relationships seemed stalled.

I even wondered about who would throw me a baby shower.  Don’t get me wrong when I say this…I just wanted to have a local relationship that would be far enough along and deep enough for this to occur.  I do have one person that fits that definition but her life had more than enough going on in it.

Why was I so lonely?  What was bothering me so much about it this time?  I thought about John and me not really having strong roots here or anywhere because we’ve moved around quite a bit.  I wondered about what this would mean as we raised our child?  Who would fill those supporting roles in our child’s life? I started to pray about it.

One recent Sunday morning, I was in the shower thinking about it again and the reason started to solidify.  I wanted to be known, to be missed, to be valued.  How many people really know me?

Almost immediately, Psalm 139 came to mind. It’s one of my favorite Psalms.  It’s about how God searches and knows the author inside and out.  It’s about how God knew about the author before he was even born and had all his ordained days written in His book. It hit me hard…God knows me!  He knows me in a way that I have only dreamed about.  And because He knows me that should be sufficient for me.  I felt better.

That morning I prayed at breakfast and asked that He would speak directly to me that morning.  That morning Pastor Jonathan was teaching on Phil 1:12-26.  His two takeaways spoke to me.  The first was centering all aspects of our lives on Jesus.  That when we lose focus things tend to go awry.  This was part of my problem.  Over the last couple of months, I have let my focus slip.  I have been focusing on my physical pain, my loneliness, planning for the baby, on John’s employment situation and definitely not my relationship with Jesus Christ. The second take away hit home with me…

We were to make much of Christ and our actions should make Him known. I should be worried about making Jesus Christ and what He has to offer known…not about making myself known.  What Jesus has to offer me thrills me or at least it used to.  I remembered when I first really understood what His offer meant to me and how I wanted to share that with everyone. It had been awhile since I had felt that way.  I was so humbled and thrilled to have heard from Him so clearly.  I felt a million times better and didn’t even think about feeling lonely until the next night.

The following day, God showed me I was known both by Him and others in eight different, unique and definitely God-inspired situations. In one situation, I had heard from one of my co-worker on maternity leave who logged into her email to wish me a ‘Happy Birthday’, to tell me that she missed talking to me and she would try to call and talk later in the week.  In another situation, John heard from someone in our Sunday class that he had missed seeing us in class yesterday.  The other situations were just as random and awesome.  I think the most awesome situation, which also was my last situation from the day, was an offer by someone to throw me a baby shower.  This is the same person who has so much going on in her life that I would have never fathomed her volunteering.

I felt so incredibly loved by God that evening.  I knew that without a doubt it was all God’s doing.  I knew that He gave me all these to remind me of His love for me and to let me know He knew all of my needs.  My job was to focus on His Son and make much of Him and the rest will fall the way it is suppose to.