God sees my suffering

Yesterday, I was driving home and talking to my mom on the phone. We talked about this and that and then with some hesitancy, she began telling me about a woman in her small group that I had met a few times before. We'll call her H.

H. is in her fifties. She grew up in Korea and had a wild and passionate love letter affair with a white American man and ran away from her family with a couple hundred bucks to join him in America. She was willing to do anything for love. They've been happily married for around 30 years.

When H. and I met at my parent's home, we didn't talk much but I could tell she was a very caring woman. She is a hairdresser by trade and has excellent English compared to most of her peers in the small group. She would ask me how I was doing and look deeply into my eyes.

After meeting me a couple of times, she told my mom: Hanna has a good heart. I can tell. I don't say this about many people but I can tell she has a warm heart. I want to give her highlights for free. Tell her to come to my salon.

So I trotted over to her salon and got some highlights for free. We chatted while she did my hair and that was that. I never saw her again. That was probably 3-4 months ago.

My mom told me on the phone that H. had felt pressed to pray for me in the last two months. At first, H. was bewildered. She really didn't know me that well and she didn't know why God was impressing on her the need to pray for me with such fervency. But she did because she felt the call so strongly. H. would ask my mom here and there, is everything ok? Is hanna and J. ok?

At the time, we were still together. my mom said, yes, they're fine. H. kept checking in every week or so and inevitably, my mom told her, they broke up. That's when H. realized, this is why God was telling me to pray.

My mom says that H. continues to pray for me. Every single day, God shows her his great love for me and she keeps at it even when she doesn't understand. She says she keeps getting filled with God's love for me.

I got off the phone with my mom and started bawling. I was one of those people driving on the freeway crying with their mouths open, haphazardly wiping away their tears. Feeling pressed to pray for someone isn't that unusual in my parent's circles and I have been around a fair amount of that myself growing up. But it's been a while since I've been around that kind of spiritual scene. And this time, it meant a lot.

The thing that hit me the most was that God sees me. He sees that I have suffered. And he sees that I am trying really hard to be happy and responsible and take care of myself. It's a remarkable thing to feel seen and to see that God cares enough to have other people praying for you out of the blue like that. Hearing about H.'s experience of God's love for me was startling. I try to believe that God loves me. But when someone prays for you, it feels like the real thing.