My whole life I’ve cared more about what people think of me than is healthy or helpful. Image management has been my mode as long as I can remember, and I have a pattern of caring more about reputation than I do about reality. In my first days learning to follow Jesus I began to realize how this focus on externals and others’ opinions can infect my faith just as it infects every other relationship and activity.

I write about Jesus, I teach people about Jesus, it is my job to talk to college women about Jesus, weekly and even daily. In these things, I have to keep vigilant watch over my tendency to care more about the outside than the inside. I am called to live my faith out in the open where people can see and invite others to join me, but I need to be very careful that I’m actually living my life with Jesus rather than just talking about Him.

If my first priority is what I can see, what others can see and comment on and measure, I easily lose sight of the things that last, the things that matter, the things God cares about most. I easily lose sight of my heart, which only God truly sees and knows. Matthew 6 teaches me that if my audience is the world, then the praise of the world is the most I’ll ever get. But if God is my first audience, then I get His reward, His notice, His praise.

“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding… Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. Matthew 6:1, 6 (The Message)

I have grown hungry to protect out part of my relationship with Jesus for just me and Him. And I’ve prayed and thought and worked to focus and prioritize and value the things I can’t see over what I can see, touch and measure (hence the name of my blog.)

Over the last year in particular I’ve been seeking hidden places, asking God to meet me in ways I don’t share, that aren’t for public consumption.

Imagine my joy when I learned that one of my favorite writers, a fellow blogger and adoptive parent who has consistently pointed me to Jesus, had a new book coming out called, UNSEEN: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World That Loves to Be Noticed. Read more