Is it Wrong to Want to be Seen? Redefining Significance in an Ego-centric Culture

I’ve often felt invisible. I know this sounds weird, I was an overachieving kid who did a bit of theater at my small Christian school, and didn’t mind being in front of people. I was also the good girl who always met if not exceeded expectations.

Being the reliable one, the compliant one does get a certain amount of positive attention, but for me it often made me feel more hidden. Like people thought they knew who I was without actually getting to know me. That I was defined by my actions and my accomplishments but was far too boring and conventional to be worth getting to know.

I was rarely a risk taker because risks meant potentially failing or disappointing someone. Conventional success, as it turns out, is just another form of mediocrity. So I was a high achieving but mostly for it’s own sake, not working toward a particular goal.

I wanted to do my best, to be the best, because I thought that’s what would make me matter, but really it just made me tired, and overwhelmed. I found identity almost entirely in the acclaim I received from others, and looking back, I’m not sure I had any idea who I was. Even my spiritual life was filled with my need to perform and somehow earn God’s love and favor.

Then I became a mother, and suddenly I really was invisible. I had interests but no time to pursue them. There were no A’s to be gotten, or GPA’s to maintain. There was no achievement to strive for because the standards were subjective. How did I know if I was doing a good job?

All those seeming achievements of motherhood: natural childbirth, baby sleeping through the night, walking, talking, potty training. Few have come easily to my me and my kids. I couldn’t list those among my accomplishments and even if I tried, I’ve learned the hard way that genetics and luck play a big role in how your kids turn out.

The goal posts are constantly moving, both sociologically and culturally, not to mention in the actual development of each individual child.

I felt desperate to be seen. Much of motherhood is invisible work and I didn’t have much else. I worked odd jobs here and there, I taught my kids at home, I toiled away on book manuscripts in anonymity and even indie published one. Still I felt like I didn’t really exist.

I was a means to an end, but I didn’t really matter.

This is a lie, of course. But it’s also one that’s easy to believe because there is some truth in it. When you become a stay at home parent, it’s like you are no longer a person.

Is this wrong? I guess the question is why am I really doing it? There is nothing wrong with sharing my struggles if I think it will help someone else feeling the same way. I’ve struggled with my desire to cultivate new skills and callings in my life, because I worry that it’s just another plea for attention. I hope this is not the case. I want to learn the difference.

I think we all want to matter, to feel seen and heard. The problem comes when we forget that we are already all of those things. I need to stop defining myself by an arbitrary standard created by human beings.

I don’t think I’ll be able to see on this side of eternity the true effect my life is having and that’s probably a good thing.

I love the name of God from the book of Genesis. In the story of Hagar, (the mother of Abraham’s son and Sarah’s maidservant) she is cast out from Abraham’s house because there is too much conflict now that Isaac, the promised son, has arrived. She is fleeing through the desert and sure that she and her son will die from lack of food and water. I imagine she had also lost hope, and felt that even if they survived, their lives would never matter.

God met her in the desert and she called him El Roi, the God who sees me. One of the things I like about looking at the names of God in the Bible is that it gives me further insight into who God is. He is the God who sees me. Even when no one seems to notice. When there is no audience or affirmation. In those moments when I wonder if I was put on this earth to do anything remotely necessary, I know he sees me.

God had plan for Hagar and her son, he has one for me as well. I may not know what it looks like yet, at least not all of it, but I know I am never invisible.