One of the cruelest features of dealing with a narcissist is how private it is.

In public, they are charming. Reasonable. Often well-liked. The damage happens where no one else is looking, and when you try to describe it, the words come out sounding small. He raises his voice sometimes. She rewrites what happened. People nod politely. Some of them wonder whether you are the difficult one.

That isolation is not incidental. It is part of how the thing works.

Hagar knew something of it. She was mistreated by Sarai and fled into the wilderness — pregnant, alone, and, from the outside, the one who had run off. No one followed her to hear her account of it.

But the angel of the Lord found her there and called her by name.

And she gave the Lord who spoke to her a name of her own:

“You are a God who sees.” (Genesis 16:13)

Notice what God did not do. He did not remove the situation. He sent her back to it. What He gave her, before anything else, was the knowledge that she had been seen — accurately, completely, without needing to prove her case.

That is not a small thing when you are the only witness to what is happening in your own home.

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If this is where you are, I wrote a 30-day devotional on exactly this — The God Who Sees. It walks through the passages where God notices people no one else noticed. It will not fix your situation. It may help you carry it.

Grace and peace,
D.C. Robertsson