Have you ever felt alone, unheard, invisible? Have you ever felt like you just don't matter? I think everyone feels that way at some time in their lives, perhaps in a relationship or on the job or in their home. Maybe you're drowning in responsibilities and feel like no one sees what you do. Maybe you're nagging your kids and they keep making bad choices. Maybe you have brilliant ideas at work but you're being ignored. Maybe your love has become to busy or just takes you for granted.
Whatever the situation, it makes you feel small. It hurts your heart. It makes you feel like you just don't count.
I'm here to tell you that you matter. Yes you. Even if you think no one can see all that you do, you matter.
I was a child when I was invited to sleep over at the pastor's house. That evening while all the other children played I made cookies in the kitchen with the pastor's wife. While we measured and stirred she told me that she loved me and that God loved me. She made me feel that I mattered to someone. For just a moment I was not invisible. I was seen. I was heard. I was loved and I mattered.
The pastor and his family moved away and I never saw her again but those words stayed with me. Through my teen years, as I dealt with molestation and abuse I held onto that thought. I mattered to someone. Night after night as I sat in the dark at the top of a bridge, I clung to those words. I stared into the inky blackness of the water below but I never jumped because I mattered. Someone, somewhere loved me.
I grew up. I got married. I had babies. Time after time I felt invisible, unheard, unseen, unloved. I gave everything I could possibly give and it still felt like it wasn't enough, never good enough.
I volunteered countless hours. I taught Sunday school. I rocked babies as a candy striper. I read stories in my kids classes. I helped out on sports teams. I served dinner to the hungry.
Perhaps if I do enough, give enough, I will be enough was my thought.
I became a yoga teacher and started to teach. I talk to people from all walks of life, all ages, with all kinds of problems. People who are broken, in their bodies, and in their emotions.
Then I began to teach yoga in the county jail. I came to love these guys that the world has hidden away. They smile when they see me. We laugh and play. We talk about fear and God and choices. With an earnest voice an inmate tells me how he realized, on his yoga mat, that he isn't just from God but that God is in him and he is in God and that we are all connected. And I realize that I matter.
I have connected the dots to see the big picture. The woman who saved my life, she mattered too. Her words have rippled out through the world and touched more lives then she can possibly imagine. Because she was kind to me, I have made a difference in the world. I have rocked babies and read stories and touched the life of an inmate.
She mattered. I matter and so do you.
When you think no one sees you. You're wrong. When you think your choices make no difference. You're wrong.
Every action you take, every word you say, has an impact on someone, somewhere. Even if you don't see it. You matter. You make a difference in so many small ways. You get to choose to smile at a stranger or scowl. You get to choose to cut someone off in traffic or let them in front of you. You can choose to be kind to your child when they spill the milk or yell at them.
Your words and actions will ripple out through the world in ways you can not even see,
for years to come. You will never know just how much you matter. This is your super power. You get to choose to use it for good or for evil.
Choose wisely.
Do you know that even if I never see you again, never talk to you again, my love will never change,
