“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1).

He came to redeem that heavy weight on your shoulders. He came to cover those scars you try so desperately to hide. He is there in the darkest parts of your life, in the parts you keep tucked away from the world. He is there in the things you don’t want to talk about, the things you want to forget ever happened.

We all have a story.
We all have moments in our lives that never really go away.
I think my favorite thing about that verse is that He calls us by name.
It’s easy to think of ourselves as one in a crowd of many saved by Jesus. It’s a little harder, at least for me, to remember that He specifically and intentionally chose me.

Have you ever had a moment where the intentional comfort of God was so incredibly clear that it blew your mind? I had a moment like that recently, while listening to a sermon when the words I didn’t know I needed to hear were spoken.
Sometimes we don’t know what we need. We get too caught up in what we’re going through. But God knows His children so well. He sees our hearts. He sees all those broken places, all the doubt and shame we’re carrying. He puts people in our lives to remind us we aren’t alone, to come alongside us in our darkness.

But what about when you don’t feel very redeemed? The nights when you feel like all the things you carry everyday weigh a little bit heavier. It’s one thing to be told that you’re redeemed, it’s another to believe and feel it. To me, the opposite of redeemed is misplaced. There are so many things we go through that seem to dislodge our identity. Whether it’s something that happened to you via the circumstances of life or something intentionally done to you; some things break us in a way that sticks.

Sometimes, things happen that feel unredeemable.

The idea of redemption often irks us because we often don’t feel worthy of it. Our identity takes so many hits that it starts to unravel. We lose our sense of worth, our trust deteriorates, and all of the shame we’ve accumulated over the years makes a home in the recesses of our minds.

Isn’t that the point of redemption? If something is worthy of being redeemed, doesn’t that take away the entire point of it all? Something has to be broken to be fixed. Something has to be unworthy to be given grace. That’s what makes redemption so glorious. That’s what makes His grace so overwhelming. The idea that something that feels so, so unlikely to prove to be anything but painful, can be turned around.

I’ve seen Him work overwhelming trials into beautiful testimonies. Redemption rarely results apart from crisis, apart from pain. Healing comes from a place of trauma.

Life leaves us disjointed. It shakes us up, knocks us down, and kicks us in the stomach. People hurt us, they break us, and then leave us to pick up the broken pieces and try our best to fit them back together. But we don’t have to pick it up alone. God meets us in this place. He kneels down beside us and arranges our broken pieces into something more beautiful. It doesn’t mean we don’t still hurt, or that we don’t sometimes get fixated on all the tiny cracks, or that we don’t forget at times that we’re redeemed. But that’s okay, because redemption isn’t a feeling, it’s a fact. It’s secured in our identity in Christ, and remains so even when we don’t feel it.

He has redeemed me. He has called me by name. I am His. He is the God of all comfort, and He meets me in my afflictions. He sees me.
He sees you too.

-Anna