God thinks about you.

God thinks about you, Ellie said as we hiked through the woods.

She was talking to her dad; I was up ahead with Harper and one of our dogs.

God thinks about you so you’re important so the end, she said with the confidence and finality of a ten year old.

I turned back to look at Chris. Who is this child, my face said. How did she get to be ours?

Her words echoed in my mind all weekend and have come back in whispered reminders almost every day since.

God thinks about you.

I don’t know if I just needed the reminder or the words lined up just the right way, but “God thinks about you” has changed my posture.

Tonight I’m going to a showing for a friend. A friend who died too soon, who left her kids too soon, who fought really hard the past fifteen years to survive things too hard for her young body.

God thinks about you.
God thinks about you as you mourn and grieve and ask why.

June and July were hard on Chris and I. I don’t know where to start or how to begin a decades-long story about how growing up in a house full of secrets and shame changes every single fiber of your being. I don’t know what stories are ready for public consumption and which ones aren’t. But we struggled through this summer, more and more old wounds coming up and demanding attention.

The truth is the longer Chris is clear-headed, the more broken parts are exposed. The more he views his childhood through the lens of his own children’s experiences, the harder and more painful it becomes. You know the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know”? Seeing what a safe, healthy childhood looks like shines a light on all the things he didn’t get from his parents. The more he tries to heal, the harder it is to stomach what he and his siblings were made to endure.

I keep thinking it will get easier soon.
I’m not sure when that will be.
God thinks about you.

I’ve sat with friends recently who’ve shared hard realities and struggles about children and spouses. About sin that keeps hunting down new victims and families so trapped by addiction it would break your heart to hear.

God thinks about you.
When nothing makes sense and you cannot see a way out of the pain or hurt or mess, God thinks about you.

I don’t know if that brings you comfort like it does me, but I hope it does.

On Wednesday our small group sat around our family room bellies full of chocolate zucchini bread and fresh salsa from the garden. We talked about kids in cages and unwanted babies and what the Bible says about the way we treat people. We wrestled with our witness and our memories, the way we have been and the way we’re trying to be now.

God thinks about you.
When the news overwhelms and everything seems so dark, He thinks about you.

I don’t know if Ellie picked up this truth at Sunday school or church camp or in a book she read. I don’t know if she heard it in a song or in a devotion.

I take no credit for her wisdom, because a lot of the time, she teaches me as opposed to the other way around.

God thinks about you.
God thinks about you.

As you walk into the meeting you are dreading; as you make the move into the new city or house. God thinks about you as you laugh and dance, ask for help and hurt. God thinks about you when things don’t go as planned and things go better than planned.

God thinks about you.

Remembering that truth changes my attitude, my spirit, my goals. It alters where I go and how I behave, when I speak up and when I am quiet.

“God thinks about you” warms my belly, makes my feet feel solid beneath me, and keeps my shoulders light.

Not because everything becomes easy and carefree, but because I am not alone, I am remembered, I am cared for.

God thinks about you.

I don’t know if that sentence shifts something in your soul the way it does mine. Maybe you already knew. Maybe you remember that every day already. Somehow I missed it. Somehow I forgot that God is with me. How did I lose focus of this part?

God thinks about you.
Right now, last night, tomorrow.
God thinks about you.

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.
-Psalm 139: 1-18, NIV version

I don’t know what you’re dealing with right now; what you’re walking into today or what you’ll have to survive this weekend. It might be hard or wonderful, destructive or joyful, but remember always: God thinks about you.