Mother's Day

This past Mother's Day I was asked to perform a one woman skit called, "The Invisible Woman."
I have not memorized anything much since I was in high school drama over thirty years ago. So here is what I memorized and presented to both services.

It started…. It started to happen gradually.
I would walk into a room and say something, and no one would notice. I would say, "Turn the TV down please" and nothing would happen. So I would get louder ........ "Turn the TV down Please!" Finally, I would have to go over and turn the TV down myself.
And then I started to notice it elsewhere.
I would walk my son to school and his teacher would say "Jake, who's that with you?" And my son would say "nobody." Granted, he's just 5, but "nobody" ? That's when I started to put it together. I'm invisible. He can't see me.One night a group of us gathered and we were celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just taken this fabulous trip and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there.....looking at the other women at the table. I had put my make up on in the car on the way.....I had an old dress on because it was the only thing clean.....and I had my unwashed hair pulled up in a banana clip and was feeling pretty darn pathetic.
Just then Janice turned to me and said, "I brought you this." It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I didn't understand........And then I read the inscription. She wrote "With admiration for all the greatness of what you are building when no one sees."
You can't name the names of the people who built the great cathedrals. Over and over again looking at these man made works, you scan down to find the names and it says "unknown......unknown......unknown."
They completed things…… not knowing that anyone would notice.
There's a story about one of the builders who was carving a tiny bird inside a beam that would be covered over by a roof. And someone came up to him and said "Why are you spending so much time on something no one will see?" and it's reported that the builder replied "because God sees."

I closed the book...and it was as if I heard God say, "I see you. You are not invisible to me. No sacrifice is too small for me to notice. I see every cupcake baked, every sequin sewn on, every tear of disappointment when things don't go the way you want them to go.
Remember, you are building a great cathedral. It will not be finished in your lifetime.
And sadly, you will never get to live there. But if you build it well, I will live there. I’ll live there…. And I thought of my children… If you build it well…I’ll live there.
See at times, my invisibility has felt like an affliction to me. But….. it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure… for the disease of MY self-centeredness. It is the antidote…. to my own pride.

It's ok that they don't see.
It's ok that they don't know.
I don’t want my son to tell his friends, “You’re not going to believe what my mom does. She gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes pies, handbastes the turkey and presses all the linens.”

Even if I do all those things, I don’t want him to say that… I want him… to want to come home….and I want him to say to his friends, “You’re going to love it there.”

It’s ok that they don’t see – me.

I don't work for them.

God sees… God sees.

We work for Him…. Sacrifice for Him.

They might never see.....not if we do it right.......

Let's pray that our work, our Love, will stand as a monument to God.