God Sees What He Did

There were years when no one believed me.

Not because the evidence wasn't there. But because he was very good at what he did. He was charming in public. Generous with others. Respected. Well-liked. The kind of man people described as a good man.

And behind closed doors, I was being slowly erased.

I was told I was too sensitive. Too dramatic. Too emotional. That I misremembered things. That I was the problem. That if I could just be different — quieter, less needy, more grateful — everything would be fine.

I began to believe it.

But there was one thing I held onto. One truth that I returned to in the darkest moments, when I doubted my own mind and my own worth.

God sees what he did.

When no one else sees

One of the most disorienting aspects of abuse within a relationship is the invisibility of it. There are no bruises to point to. There is no single dramatic event that others can witness. There is only a slow, quiet accumulation of moments that each seem small on their own.

A dismissal here. A humiliation there. A lie told so smoothly you begin to wonder if you imagined it. A door slammed. A silence that lasts for days. A version of events rewritten so many times that you can no longer find your own memory inside it.

And when you try to tell someone, the response can be devastating: "But he seems so lovely." "Are you sure you're not overreacting?" "He's always been so kind to me." "Maybe you need to look at your part in this."

The isolation of not being believed is its own wound. It compounds the original harm. It tells you: your experience does not count. Your pain is not real. You are alone in this.

And yet.

There is a witness who was present for every moment. Every closed door. Every whispered cruelty. Every lie. Every manipulation. Every time you were made to feel small. Every tear you cried alone. Every night you lay awake wondering what was wrong with you.

God was there.

The God who sees

In the book of Genesis, there is a woman named Hagar. She was a servant — powerless, used, and ultimately cast out into the wilderness with her son. She had no advocate. No one to speak for her. She sat down in the desert and wept, certain that she and her child would die.

And then God appeared to her.

In her response, she gave God a name that had never been used before. She called him El Roi: the God who sees me.

Not the God who fixes everything immediately. Not the God who punishes the person who wronged her on the spot. But the God who sees. The God who was present. The God who knew what had happened to her and did not look away.

That name has stayed with me through everything.

El Roi. The God who sees me.

When I was being told that my experience wasn't real, I held onto this: God sees what he did. He was in that room. He heard those words. He knows what happened. I do not need the world to believe me, because the one whose opinion matters most already knows the truth.

Justice and the temptation to make it happen yourself

I will be honest about something.

There were times when I wanted justice so badly it frightened me. I wanted people to know what he had done. I wanted him to be exposed. I wanted the mask to fall. I wanted the people who had praised him and defended him and told me I was overreacting to finally see what I had seen.

I understand that desire. It is not a shameful one. It is the natural human response to injustice. When we have been wronged and no one acknowledges it, something in us cries out for the record to be set straight.

But I also learned something painful about the pursuit of that kind of justice: it can keep you tethered to the person who hurt you. Every hour spent trying to make others see, every conversation replayed in your mind, every attempt to build a case — it can become its own kind of prison. You remain in relationship with the harm, even after you have left the relationship.

There is a verse in Romans that I have returned to many times: "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord."

I do not read this as a passive instruction to simply accept what was done to me. I read it as an invitation to put down a burden that was never mine to carry. The burden of making sure he faces consequences. The burden of ensuring that everyone knows the truth. The burden of being the one who makes it right.

That burden is not mine. It belongs to God.

What it means to be known by God

There is something that happens when you truly believe that God sees you — not just your suffering, but you. Your worth. Your name. The specific texture of your pain.

It begins to loosen the grip that another person's opinion has over you.

When your sense of worth depends on being believed by others, on being vindicated publicly, on having the right people finally understand what happened — you remain vulnerable. Because those things may never come. The people who chose to believe him may continue to believe him. The narrative he constructed may persist. The world may never deliver the acknowledgement you deserve.

But if your worth is grounded in something that cannot be taken from you — in the knowledge that you are seen and known and loved by the God who was present for every moment — then another person's refusal to see you loses some of its power.

He can rewrite the story for everyone else. He cannot rewrite it for God.

The question of forgiveness

I want to speak carefully here, because forgiveness is one of the most misused concepts in conversations about abuse.

Forgiveness does not mean pretending that what happened was acceptable. It does not mean reconciling with someone who has not changed. It does not mean removing consequences. It does not mean telling your children that what they witnessed was normal. It does not mean staying in a situation that is harming you.

Forgiveness, as I have come to understand it, is something you do for yourself. It is the decision to stop allowing another person's actions to continue poisoning your present. It is the release of the debt — not because they deserve to be released from it, but because carrying it is destroying you.

It is also, I believe, something that God helps us do. Because on our own, it can feel impossible. The wound is too deep. The injustice is too real. The anger is too justified.

But I have found that when I bring that anger to God — when I say, honestly, "I cannot forgive this on my own. I do not want to forgive this. But I am willing to be made willing" — something begins to shift. Not immediately. Not completely. But slowly, over time, the grip loosens.

Forgiveness is not a single moment. It is a direction you keep choosing.

You are not invisible

If you are reading this and you are in the middle of something that no one else can see — if you are being told that your experience isn't real, that you are too sensitive, that you are the problem — I want to say something to you directly.

You are not invisible.

There is a God who sees you. Who was present for every moment. Who knows exactly what was said and done and taken from you. Who has not looked away.

You do not need the world to believe you in order for your experience to be real. You do not need him to admit what he did in order for it to have happened. You do not need vindication from the people who chose his version of events.

The truth does not require an audience.

What I know now

I know now that the years I spent trying to make people see were years I could not fully give to healing. Every ounce of energy I directed toward being believed was energy I was not directing toward becoming free.

I know now that the most important witness was never the people around me. It was never the friends who chose sides, the family members who stayed neutral, the community that continued to welcome him. The most important witness was the one who had been there all along.

El Roi. The God who sees.

And I know now that being seen by God — truly seen, known, held — is not a consolation prize for the validation that never came from the people around me. It is something far more solid. Far more permanent. Far more real.

He saw what was done to me. He sees who I am becoming. And he has not finished with my story yet.

A prayer for those who are not yet believed

If you are not yet in a place where you can pray, that is okay. But if you are, perhaps these words might be a place to begin:

God, you see what happened to me. You were there. You know the truth of it, even when others don't. I am tired of carrying the weight of being unbelieved. I am tired of trying to make people see. Help me to trust that you see. Help me to find my worth in being known by you, rather than in being vindicated by them. And when I am ready — when you have made me ready — help me to put down the burden of justice and trust it to you. Amen.