There's a difference between being seen and being known.
Being seen is surface. It's the version of you that shows up in photos and small talk and first impressions. It's the you that's easy to like.
Being known is something else entirely. It's the you that exists at 2am when the anxiety won't quiet. The you that snaps at the people you love most. The you that doubts, that grieves, that sometimes doesn't recognize herself in the mirror.
For a long time, I let people see me. I was very good at it. But I kept the known version of myself carefully hidden, because I wasn't sure she was worth keeping.
And then I found a community of women who stayed long enough to find her anyway.
They didn't run. They didn't fix. They just — stayed. And in their staying, I began to understand something about the God who knit me together in my mother's womb and called me by name.
Psalm 139 says He knows when I sit and when I rise. He perceives my thoughts from afar. He is familiar with all my ways.
To be fully known and fully loved — not despite the knowing, but within it — that is the miracle. And sometimes, God lets us taste it first through the women He places beside us.