The Unseen Women : Hagar

There are days when I feel invisible. Maybe you’ve been there too–walking into a room full of people, smiling, making small talk, but sensing that no one really sees you. For me, as a divorced single mom working in a very public role , this feeling comes more often than I’d like to admit. I can be surrounded by acquaintances, busy with projects, and still feel unseen. I can and do love my job and still feel like I don’t belong or have imposter syndrome, sneak up like an old friend and tap me on the shoulder. 

Lately, the story of Hagar in Genesis has kept bubbling up in my life and, to be transparent, before now she wasn’t someone I paid much attention to (how ironic–there’s a meme for this somewhere). Hagar was an outsider, overlooked and cast aside,yet she was the first person in Scripture to name God. She called Him El Roi, “The God who sees me” (Gen. 16:13, NJKV). A name that carries with it a personalized intimacy that each of us desire whether we know it or recognize it.  Hagar’s story is both heartbreaking and hopeful; a tension that only makes her encounter with God that much more powerful and, to me, relatable.  

Hagar wasn’t part of God’s chosen family by birth. She was an Egyptian slave, drawn into Abraham and Sarah’s household and when Sarah could not bear children, she gave Hagar to Abraham, and Hagar conceived. Instead of the joy that naturally surrounds the promise of a new baby, Hagar was mistreated by Sarah and eventually ran off. I don’t pass judgment on Sarah as I am sure she, too, felt unseen. I cannot imagine her own heartbreak when she was unable to conceive.

I also can’t imagine the weight of Hagar’s despair: a pregnant, enslaved woman with no one to defend her, nowhere to go. Yet it was in this very wilderness of life where God met her. In, Hagar: Rediscovering the God Who Sees Me, Shadia Hrichi writes that, “ God doesn’t wait for us to clean up our lives before He comes to us. He pursues us in the mess, in the wilderness places, just like He did with Hagar.” What amazes me is that God didn’t just see Hagar, he spoke to her and for those of us that have felt unseen, we know there is a difference. He gave her promises about her son, her future and in response Hagar gave God a name. In her deepest rejection, she experienced the nearness of God so profoundly that she declared, “You are the God who sees me.”

I can’t read those words without feeling them in my own bones, without feeling the goosebumps that start at my scalp and end at my toes, and without feeling the tears prickling at my eyes. When the world overlooks me, when I feel like I don’t measure up to expectations, God sees me. Brene Brown talks about how shame whispers, “You are not enough,” but true belonging becomes from knowing we are worthy of love and connection (The Gifts of Imperfection). Hagar’s story shows that God declares us ‘enough’ long before we believe it ourselves. 

Hagar’s story teaches us that God shows up for the overlooked, not just the powerful. I’ve carried that with me on the days I feel small. In fact, on the small days I often ask God for a reminder that I am seen and He always delivers. Whether through a text from a friend or a butterfly landing on my open car window–He delivers. 

For every woman who has felt invisible in her own home, at work, or in her relationships, Hagar’s story is a reminder that God notices what others ignore. He meets us in our wildernesses- the heartbreaks, the rejections, the ordinary moments of loneliness–and he calls us seen.