When You Just Can’t Do It Anymore

Now you see me….now you don’t.

Charlotte Fisher has two children, a pretty good marriage, and a very big problem – she is invisible. Her husband and kids can see the clean socks in their drawers and the hot food on the table, but they cannot see her.

She’s disappeared into the anonymity of being the wife, the mom, the butter getter, the m ilk pourer, the laundry washer, and all the other terms that describe a behind – the – scenes woman who holds life together. She’s a pair of hands to fix things, an apron to cook meals, a clock to tell time, and even a nameless driver to chauffeur family and friends wherever they want to go.

She’s invisible!

As I once again find myself making the decision to reduce my counseling load, based on the needs of my family, I find myself asking – are my daily responsibilities erasing my life?

When this questions starts to niggle it’s way into my behaviors such as

• becoming irritated at the single glass (which is not mine) that just can’t seem to be washed and put away unless I do it
• becoming infuriated that once again the just cleaned entry way has become cluttered with shoes/socks/backbacks and dog toys
• becoming withdrawn because no one seems to care that making their world go round makes my world go round

I know it is time to grab a cup of my favorite beverage (an ice cold frappuccino) and settle in to re-read a small but powerful book - The Invisible Woman: When Only God Sees.

In this book Nicole Johnson compares the work we do as wives and mothers to the work it took to complete the world’s great cathedrals. Many of which took over a hundred years to complete.

One hundred years was far more than one working man’s entire lifetime, which meant that many builders devoted their whole lives to a work they would never see finished….

Would this craftsman strain to see the finished structure with the eyes of his spirit, trying to imagine what the bricks would become? He must have, if only because he would need that vision to keep him inspired every day.

When he looked around all he saw was rubble and dust and an endless amount of work to be done. and yet he kept working.

And as I read my head could be seen nodding up and down in agreement. That’s me I would whisper.

One particularly moving story told of a very prominent man who went to visit a cathedral that was being built. He stopped to watch one of the workers, perhaps a monk. He saw the worker carving a tiny bird into the inside of a beam that would eventually be covered over by the stone roof. The man asked the worker why he was spending so much time and giving so much attention to something that no one would ever see. The builder never looked up. He never stopped carving as he replied, “Because God sees.”

And as I close the book and walk past the ’schoolroom table’ piled high with Miss Sam’s ‘assignments in progress’ and into the kitchen – a complete disaster from last night’s dinner and continue on my way into the laundry room that will take a front-end loader to shovel through……

I whisper…but God sees.

I’m building a cathedral, but not for them, in them. And they will not see me if I’m doing it right. As a mother and a wife, I can be an extraordinary invisible builder, faithfully building what I cannot even see myself. Having set my sights so high, the foundation must go deep. I don’t work for my husband and children; I work for God…

I’ll keep building away, pouring my heart into this life, trusting that it is not in vain. I’ll carve tiny birds into things that few eyes will ever notice. I will see my work as prayer, and trust that His eyes miss nothing.

As I clear my personal schedule, and make myself more available to my family, I find myself now doing it without question.

Invisibility is love’s most beautiful costume.

This post is first in the series “Books That Inspire” . A series of posts about the books which have helped me find ‘good mental health’ when I feel as though I have lost it.

All of the above quotes are taken from Nicole Johnson’s book: The Invisible Woman: When Only God Sees. You can read more about Nicole Johnson here.

Don’t forget, if there is a question that you would like to have answered or a topic you would like to have discussed, be sure to email me at dbeverlyhills@gmail.com. All questions will remain anonymous. All answers will be sprinkled with my perspective.