Live quiet and mind ya business.

Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands. - 1 Thessalonians 4:11

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I’ve been really convicted by the verse lately and how to apply it in my personal life. Like, can’t get it out of my head kinda conviction. Live quietly and mind your business. Interesting right? Is this verse telling me to fly under the radar, never comment, contribute and question and just live a general unseen life? These are some of the questions I have been trying to figure out, trying to figure out why this instruction from scripture seems so hard to grasp.

Every single thought, feeling and google search comes back to one thing - this instruction is not hard or difficult, it’s quite simple really but we have such a hard time grasping it because we want to be known, heard, seen. We don’t want to be quiet and mind our business because we will be forgetting, pushed aside and how on earth with Karen and Aaron know they are wrong unless I comment on their post and set them straight!?

We live in a world that believes if you are not heard and seen then you are nothing and no one.

And that is precisely why this scripture is so important.

We all have fears of being unseen, don’t we? And, as a mom who spends 98% of her time in the home, in a car or rushing through a store, feeling unseen becomes a harsh but o so real reality. Sometimes we are unseen because we want to be, sometimes we are unseen because we do the same thing every day, sometimes we are unseen because we work the most thankless job and sometimes we are unseen because of the cultural standard of “just being a mom is not enough” wreaks havoc in our lives.

For me, being a mom is not the first time I have felt unseen and definitely won’t be the last. I have felt unseen as a kid who wanted to be but doesn’t excel at anything, I felt unseen as a teenager who was shy and awkward and just wanted a boy to like her, I felt unseen in a relationship with someone who would never come home, unseen as a nurse who was trying to navigate the dog eat dog world of the ER, unseen in a massive city, unseen in an organization that I didn’t grow up in, unseen in a marriage where everyone knew him not me, unseen as a mom who held it all together but was falling apart on the inside, unseen by a God who I thought promises happiness but didn’t seem to deliver. If I could sum up my life in one word, unseen may just be it.

Today, right now where I stand, the unseeness gets overwhelming and these limiting feelings, the closed doors, the overwhelming sense of “I can’t do it” is exaggerated. Shame, lies and fear start setting up shop and hanging some pictures in my mind and I find myself wishing these precious days away.

But for what?

These moments. These times when you and I feel unseen, they are not moments to wish away, they are not moments of failure, or times to just get through. These are holy moments.

And maybe the most unseen seasons in our lives are the most holiest of moments.

I find myself prioritizing being seen over being His and man, have I missed the point. Maybe God is calling me away, calling me to be unseen, calling me to fly under the radar, calling me away while calling me to Him.

Maybe I am not unseen but rather deeply seen by a loving God who is using this season to prepare me for the next.  Building a firm foundation - rooted and built-in Him so that whatever may come can never blow me down.

Maybe being unseen, as painful as it can be, is exactly where I want to be.

Maybe the whole point of this Christian life is to be unseen, to mind our own business, to create for His glory so, as Paul says in verse 12, “that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”

Be unseen. Be quiet. Mind Your business so that others will see you and respect you.

Now that’s the Jesus living upside down and backwards kinda gospel message that I love - Be unseen to be seen.

Can you hear Him? Can you hear Him quietly calling you to be seen by Him and Him alone, calling you to let Him satisfy your soul? Let Him be our prince of peace and wonderful counsellor? Can you hear Him telling you to be quiet, to stop fighting for attention, to stop having a comment for everything, to stop drawing others to yourself, to start minding your own business, minding your own life, minding your own holiness? Can you hear Him?

If you can’t maybe it’s time to be a little more unseen too.

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