Letter from the Editor: The God Who Sees Me

By Courtney Warren

When our spiritual life director at school, Mr. Gilreath, asked for volunteers to speak at chapel, I didn’t hesitate. I love talking to our students. I love the microphone, I love sharing stories, and, more than anything, I love listening to theirs. I love when students stop by my classroom to tell me about soccer tournaments, visits to grandparents, new books they’re reading, and weekend plans. I write it all down in my planner, because those little details matter. They make you feel seen.

That word—seen—is why I chose my chapel theme. We’ve been looking at the different names of God in Scripture, and the moment I saw “El Roi,” I knew it was mine. In Hebrew, Ro’iy can be translated as “shepherd,” but also as “seeing,” “looking,” or “gazing.” El Roi means “The God Who Sees Me.”

It’s a name I connect with deeply, because so many moments in my life have made me feel unseen or unheard.

I still remember kindergarten with Mrs. Cindy.  She had a blue fuzzy rug with an apple painted on it. I didn’t like the rug, because it clearly had not seen a washing machine in decades, and I didn’t like the apple, because it was painted with 90s globby paint one finds at the Walmart, but I liked school, I liked Mrs. Cindy, and I loved being read to while we sat on the apple rug. She wasn’t quite as cool as Mrs. Turner, who had a spider collection in her classroom, but I was given Mrs. Cindy as my teacher, so you take what you can. 

When I was in Mrs. Cindy’s kindergarten class, I vividly remember feeling like my legs were going to burst. They were wiggly, and I needed to move them. I couldn’t help it. I took to my feet. I didn’t move an inch from my desk, I simply stood up and continued cutting out whatever project she had us working on. 

Sarah Karafa was sitting to my right, and the love of my life, Cam Short, also a lefty so it was clearly meant to be, sat to my left. I remember Mrs. Cindy asking me what I was doing and why I was standing. 

I said, “I’m crazy cutting. My legs are crazy with wiggles.” She stared at me and told me to sit on my bottom or she’d call my mother. I sat on my bottom and she still called my mother. 

I don’t remember what happened when I got home, and I don’t have many more memories of that class. But I remember being told to sit and be quiet. All the time. 

Now, many of  my students know my arch nemesis comes in the form of an elderly blonde woman who lives in South Georgia named Linda Johnson. She was my fourth-grade teacher at Westwood Academy. That is her government-given name, and no, she has still not accepted my friend request on Facebook. 

I was sitting at my desk, a desk directly beside Linda’s desk, when I yawned. It was a simple moment. Linda Johnson was across the room, standing behind the love of my life, Cam Short, and she stopped teaching. She dropped the chalk as if she’d been burned, and she turned to me with fire in her eyes that can only come from the depths of…. fourth-grade teacher rage. 

Why, you may ask? Because when I yawned, I made a sound that I had heard all of my life. A yawning sound many of us are accustomed to. 

Linda Johnson, chalk now on the carpeted floor, turned to me and, from across the room, said, “Courtney Stevens, that is the most disrespectful thing I have ever heard in my life.  You stop trying to draw attention to yourself; no one wants to hear you.”

On September 14, 2015, there was a school shooting at Delta State University. I was the first reporter on the scene, as I was a senior staff reporter for The Bolivar Commercial at the time. Because it was a small town and I had relationships with the first responders, I was led behind the yellow tape and received inside information long before Fox News, CNN, and even the New York reporters who flew in later that day. 

However, despite knowing what truly transpired, the TV reporters latched onto a rumor that the shooting had happened because of an affair between the shooter’s girlfriend and the victim. It wasn’t true. 

I worked all day long to put those words out in the world. I worked for the next month to ensure that people knew the truth, but I was one person. They had mics, they had live TV broadcasts, and I had only an iPhone and not a single hope of anyone hearing what I had to say. As a matter of fact, just last year that tragedy got brought up in conversation, and the person I was speaking with still thought the shooting was due to an affair. They didn’t know the truth. I hadn’t been heard. 

Different stages. Different settings. Same feeling: unseen. Unheard. Told to be smaller, quieter.

Maybe you’ve felt that way too.

That’s why El Roi resonates with me. In Genesis 16, Hagar, a young Egyptian servant cast out by her mistress Sarai, was alone in the wilderness, pregnant and hopeless. She wasn’t Jewish. She didn’t worship God. And yet it wasn’t the gods of Egypt who met her there. It was the Lord. The angel of God asked her, “Where have you come from, and where are you going?” and then blessed her. Hagar named God “El Roi”—“The God who sees me”—because she realized she had been seen by the One who matters most.

That’s powerful. It means our worth isn’t in how many followers we have, how many people clap for us, or how often we’re invited in. We’re seen by God Himself.

I’ve been a teacher for ten years now. I know that sometimes it feels like what I say goes in one ear and out the other, but last year I got a note from a student that reminded me why I do what I do. It said that Mrs. Warren always listens. That hit me. It made me realize why I try so hard to remember birthdays, soccer games, and grandparents’ names—because I know what it’s like not to be seen, and I never want my students to feel that.

We all crave that. As Zoey from Huntrix sings, “Why do I cover up the colors stuck inside my head?” We shrink ourselves because we want to be accepted, but God already sees the colors inside of us.

When we truly see God, we no longer need to be seen by everyone else. And when God sees us, we can finally start seeing others.

That’s the message I want to leave with you this month: You are seen. You are wanted. You are heard. Your story matters. Your life is like a home video God proudly shows His friends. He says, “Look at my child—do you see him? Do you see her?”

You’re seen. El Roi. The God Who Sees.