Invisible Child

I’ve been getting some things off my chest lately, not to be ruled by my emotions, but to lay them down at the feet of Jesus and let Him do what only He can do. I’ve learned that silence can feel heavy when your heart is full. And sometimes speaking it out is part of the healing. Not to stay stuck in it, but to unclutter the mind and heart so there is more room for truth. Less of me. More of Him. I’ve carried something for as long as I can remember the feeling of being the invisible child. That identity shaped so much of my life. It fueled a constant need for approval. It made me a people pleaser. It pushed me to overachieve, to always do more, to always be enough by performance standards that never actually satisfied me. It’s part of why I collected certificates instead of peace. Why I pushed myself to exhaustion. Why I ignored my body until it broke under the pressure of stress and autoimmune flare ups. I was always trying to be seen. Trying to prove I existed. Trying to earn what should have been freely given love, safety, belonging. But something has changed in me over the last few years since truly finding Jesus. I know my worth now. Not because I earned it, but because He says it. I’ve learned how to laugh again. How to breathe again. How to love my husband and my children in a way that isn’t driven by fear or performance, but by peace. Even how to begin loving myself in a way that feels unfamiliar but right. I still struggle. I still slip into people pleasing sometimes. That’s a deep wound I’m still healing from. I’m honest about that. I’m still a work in progress, one day at a time. There’s also a voice I’ve had to fight against for years. One that tells me I shouldn’t care about my health or my body. That it’s vain to try. That I should hide. That I should shrink. That I should accept self hate as normal. But I’m learning to recognize that voice for what it is, and I’m learning to replace it with worship. When that voice gets loud, I turn on worship music and I remind my soul who I belong to. I praise the One who created me. I speak life over what He called good. This is warfare in my life, and it’s been one of my hardest battles. And tonight something unexpected happened. Someone told me they were proud of the hard work I’ve been doing. It sounded simple, but it hit something deep inside of me. Something I didn’t even realize I was still holding onto. It opened something in me like a release I didn’t know I needed. And it turned into tears I couldn’t stop like a floodgate opening in my soul, washing out places I didn’t know were still hurting. It wasn’t just emotion. It felt like cleansing. Like God was loosening old weight I had been carrying for far too long. All of those emotions and everything I’ve been processing ended up pouring into something else too. I wrote a song. I had to get it out on paper. It became my way of closing a chapter I didn’t realize I was still standing inside of. A way to let it all go. A way to stop looking back and finally leave it at the cross. I don’t want to keep picking up the identity of the invisible child anymore. I don’t want to live from that place again. I want to remember Jehovah El Roi. The God who sees me. I felt seen in a way that my heart has been longing for for years, and I’m still processing what that means. I’m learning to rebuild what feels like a broken temple and to steward the body and life God entrusted to me. Not out of shame, but out of honor. And for the first time in my life, I can say I’m not just surviving this battle. I’m winning it. written by Dee McFall Music by Drew Brawner.