What do you see?

He looks so little stumbling into the hallway with his blanket draped around him. “It’s happening again,” he cries. “Everything I see is zooming in and zooming out. Make it stop mom! Make it stop!” I’m still half asleep, foggy-eyed and glasses hunting. What in the world is he talking about? And seriously, will we ever outgrow middle of the night wake-ups?

I rub sleep out of my eyes and try to focus. He’s carrying on about everything getting really small and then getting really big, and how he just wants it to stop. Sixteen years of parenting has taught me a thing or two about middle of the night illnesses. They never make a whole lot of sense. Fever is my assessment. Motrin, a cold washcloth and my presence finally calms it all.

The fever sticks around and these wake ups become a nightly occurrence. I try to deal kindly with them. But then it keeps happening at 3 AM with no fever and no explanation. After several nights of this, my brain shuts down, and I employ a very well-known parenting technique. I ignore it. I tell him he’s too big for this. He’s imagining it. GO BACK TO BED. Nothing is “zooming in or zooming out”.

And this, my friends, is why I do not write a parenting blog; or have a mantle full of “Mom of the Year” awards. After the third night, I google this “zooming in/zooming out” thing. Because I also have an MD in internet diagnosis-es. And guess what?

It is an actual issue! I found loads of information about it. It often begins with a fever but can stick around after the fever is gone. People described in vivid detail how scary the “zooming in/zooming out” feeling is … and yeah. I feel like my mom-card should be revoked. What in the world!!??

So I grab that kid of mine and squeeze him around the neck. “It’s an actual thing,” I tell him, “lots of people struggle with it.” I explain what I have read, and we talk about some ways to handle it.

“Thanks mom! I knew it was real!” he shouts as he runs out the door to play.

And that night? He slept through the night.

Turns out that when you’re struggling, it’s helpful to be told you have a real problem by someone who sees you.

I think I knew this truth. I just forgot how it works.

“You are the God who sees me… I have now seen the One who sees me” (Genesis 16:13). It’s this story and these words from Genesis 16 that immediately come to mind as I patch up my injured parenting pride. The story is of Hagar, a slave girl in these early pages of Scripture. She’s in the middle of a mess. Running for her life, carrying Abram’s child and sent away by her master’s wife Sarai, she has no idea what to do or what will become of her.

It’s a much different problem than the boy who can’t sleep for the spinning and zooming room. But the solution is the same.

She needs to be seen.

God breaks in and reminds her that he is with her. He says … “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael for the Lord has heard your misery.” His words do not make anything about her situation better, but still she falls to her knees in worship. Because here’s the thing I’m learning about us humans.

We don’t need to be fixed as much as we need to be seen.

Parker Palmer in his book Let you Life Speak says it this way, “The human soul does not want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed … exactly like it is.”

“It’s a real thing,” I tell my sleep-deprived kid. I see you struggling with it. It’s hard and scary. But, I’m right here.

It’s what we all need to hear sometimes, isn’t it? I see you, and it is real. Whatever you are feeling no matter how strange or weird or made up it may sound. It. Is. Real. That fear you can’t beat, that doubt that hovers, that belief that certain things will never change. It’s a real thing with a weight all of it’s own. And you don’t have to carry it alone.

Like the resurrected Jesus who looked straight at his disciple Thomas, the one who just couldn’t believe it all and said, “Put your finger here and see my hands …” (John 20:27). Jesus saw his friend’s doubt. And here’s the best part. He didn’t chastise him or condemn him for it. No, he healed him. He dispelled that doubt by making it real and calling it out into the light. “My Lord and my God!” Thomas proclaims as he is made to see the One who sees him.

And I forget that’s how it works. Light chases the darkness away. But first, we have to acknowledge that the darkness exists. It exists in our own lives as well as in the lives of others.

One of the Hebrew names for God is El Roi. It means the God who sees me. And here’s the thing. We are made in his image. We are seen so that we can turn and see others. We don’t have to understand all they are going through, and we don’t have to fix them. But we can see them and acknowledge the realness of the places where they are standing.

The zooming in and zooming out that comes with the spin of this world can often make the ground under our feet feel unsteady. We can forget that God is as real in the night as he is at daybreak. Sometimes we all just need to be reminded of what’s true. The beauty and the glory of this life crash hard into the heartache and the pain, and it is that disoriented feeling that makes us long for home.

But it’s OK, God whispers through the pages of Scripture, “I AM the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the end.” I am as real as it gets. And not only do I see you. I will be with you. Always.

And our job? Well, maybe it is to simply point weary travels in the direction of the One who sees us.

” You God are my God … I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you” (Psalm 63:1-3).