“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me…” Psalm 139

Being known is something we all desire.  Not in the sense of being famous or popular, although some people may think that will make them ‘feel’ known, but that word known in Hebrew breaks down to a few things that actually send chills down my spine:

Acquainted
Acknowledged
Concerned
Understood
To Comprehend

I don’t know about you but I don’t comprehend myself a lot of the time. But to know that there is one who not only comprehends me, understands me, and sees me, but is also concerned for me and acquainted with me – I need to know that and be reminded of it often.

You need to know that you are known because life will tell you that you are not.
Pain will tell you that you are invisible.
Relationships will tell you that you are rejected.
Suffering will tell you that you’ve been abandoned.
Trials will tell you that you’re a failure.
Loneliness will tell you that you are not enough.

Seasons will come and seasons will go and with each season like a tossing wave you will feel validated one moment and invaluable the next.

Your successes will breath hope into your lungs and your mishaps will take that same breath away.

But Psalm 139 tells us that we are familiar and valuable, chosen, seen, heard, understood by a God who calls us His own even when life tells us otherwise.

A couple of years ago I woke up different.  My bones ached. My joints ached. My body was weak. My legs were numb. My arms went cold. My energy was gone. I felt like I had the flu…except it never went away. I was different from then on. After countless attempts to cure and find answers I was beyond frazzled and tired. I was tired of asking men what was wrong with me and decided what I needed wasn’t more tests, or a diagnosis from limited human minds that didn’t even create me.

What I needed was prayer.
What I needed was strength.
What I needed was hope.
What I needed was to know that in the face of my mystery illness that whether or not it went away that God could still see me and was with me in spite of my weak and frail body.

“He notes my very countenance, whether smiling or in tears, whether healthful or sickly.  He looks tenderly upon my hands and feet; he hears my voice, the beating of my heart, and my very breathing, I do no love myself better than He loves me”  John Henry Newman

Have you been in this place?  Where you feel numb? Have you ever been in a situation that has left you feeling lifeless, helpless, exhausted, or invisible?

When I reached the end of myself, I reached out to a woman that I co-lead our single moms group with and asked her if she would mind praying with me. This girl sends down heaven when she prays, I wish I prayed like that. As we talked she said “you know I have someone else that I would like to bring in with me to pray over you, his name is Ben and God speaks through him.” I was open – maybe a tad cynical because I was tired of being disappointed but I said okay.

We met in a prayer room and my friend Aisa and Ben began to pray over me. They both placed their hands upon my shoulders and began to pray over my health, my diagnosis, my family, my worries but then something else happened that I hadn’t bargained for. They both began praying and speaking of things that no one else would ever know unless they were inside my head. They began to speak of areas in my heart where I needed to forgive. They began to speak of my anxieties. They began to speak about my music and how I had notebooks full of songs that I needed to share but was to afraid to (No one knows about my notebooks of music except my husband) As they began to pray over me they began to pray that the Lord would give me a new song right then and there. That is when the words and melody for “You know me” dropped into my head …

You wrap these wounds hidden in me
Oh your love it covers me
Though I am worn…

You hold my chin and lift it high
Oh your hope it fills my eyes
through the storm

Every need you meet
Every ache you see
Every desperate plea
You see me

Every victory
I have yet to see
In the mystery
You see me

You know me
You’ve known me
And called me by name

You take my hands and pick me up
Oh your spirit fills my cup
And takes me in, again

You take this heart and make it clean
Oh you wipe away these stains
And make me new, I’m new

Every need you meet
Every ache you see
Every desperate plea
You see me

Every victory
I have yet to see
In the mystery
You see me

You know me
You’ve known me
And called me by name

It was as though  in that moment of being worn and sickly that God showed me “I see you.” It was in that moment that through these people He reminded me that He knew the areas in my heart that still needed forgiveness, the ares in my heart that were still wounded. In that moment He reminded me that He has known me from the beginning, He saw my yesterdays, He holds my todays and my tomorrows. He holds and He cradles me throughout every part.

“You are all around me – in front and in back – and you have put your hand on me” Psalm 139:5

It was in that moment that He not only showed me that He saw my brokenness, unforgiveness, worries, fears, anxieties and frailty that He also saw my dreams and victories….from the beginning…

“All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old” Psalm 139:16

In that moment He reminded me that I’m a Psalmist and that I have been given something not to possess but to give away and I was keeping it inside because of all of my fear of rejection, fear of not being enough, fear of not measuring up.

Everyone has a innate desire and need to be known. To be known in our frailty, in our darkness, in our valleys of uncertainty and our rivers yet to be crossed.  God sees us from before and loved us when we were not yet.

“You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother’s body. When I was put together there, you saw my body as it was formed.” Psalm 139:16

In my greatest fear of my body robbing me of life, God gave me life once again in that moment as if to say,  “I see your suffering, I’ve been there too…I’ve known you from the beginning, I’ve called you by name, I have chosen you for my own, I have never left you and I never will”

I can honestly say even though it has been hard waking every day to a body that is less than cooperative, I am in a weird way thankful that God used my broken external shell to be moved and changed inwardly. I am thankful that He used my weakness to strengthen my spirit. This is the paradox of the gospel, that a most perfect God would be bruised so that broken people would be made whole and that our brokenness would make us more perfect in and through Him.

I am broken and as the Easter season begins I still ask the Lord to meet my need and bring me healing and if not, I know that He sees me, He knows me and He has called me by name to be His very own whether in comfort or in discomfort…I will praise His name.

God wants you to know that you are known. He has known you from before you were formed.  He knows you in your trials, victories yet to be seen and all the in between..and He has called you by name.

Click here to listen to You Know Me in iTunes.