You can be living a life you didn’t choose and still feel like you’re the one who did something wrong.
You can be doing everything you’re supposed to do; showing up, caring for people, holding things together—and still carrying a quiet sense that something isn’t right inside you.
When you look around, it can feel like everyone else is living a life that fits them while you’re just trying to make it through yours.
If you’ve ever felt that way, the story of Hagar in the Old Testament may feel more familiar than you expect.
Hagar’s story doesn’t begin in a place of promise. It begins in the wilderness—between one place and another, what we might call the middle of nowhere.
And it’s there that the angel of the LORD addresses her:
“Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where have you come from and where are you going?”
He speaks her name.
That alone would have stopped her in her tracks. For so long, she had been reduced to her usefulness, her role, what she could produce.
And now, she is seen.
The question itself is an invitation. The LORD knows where she has been and where she is going, but He is drawing her into a relationship.
She answers honestly: “I am fleeing from my mistress.”
There is a world of truth in those words. She is fleeing—from misuse, from mistreatment, from neglect.
Where she is going has not yet been decided, because getting away is all that matters.
Then comes the directive that makes us pause: “Return to your mistress, and submit to her authority.”
And if we stop there, it’s hard to understand.
But God doesn’t leave her there.
He gives her something to hold onto in the middle of it. “I will give you more descendants than you can count.”
The same promise given to Abraham.
And then: “You are now pregnant and will give birth to a son. You are to name him Ishmael.”
Ishmael—God hears.
This name is not incidental.
It is a direct response to her affliction.
God sees her.
God hears her.
God names her son.
God gives her a future.
Then comes a promise that sounds unusual to modern ears: “He shall be a wild donkey of a man…”
To us, it can sound harsh.
But in Hagar’s world, the wild donkey symbolized freedom, independence, resilience, and the ability to survive in inhospitable places.
Her son would not live under the oppression she had endured.
Ishmael would be free.
And for Hagar, freedom—even with hardship—was not the same as bondage.
This encounter changes her.
She becomes the first person in Scripture to name God: El Roi—The God who sees me.
She doesn’t just realize that she has seen God. She realizes that God has seen her.
And she names the place:
Beer-lahai-roi—“the well of the Living One who sees me.”
What was once the middle of nowhere becomes holy ground.
And maybe that’s where this meets you.
Not in a place where everything is resolved, but in the middle of something you didn’t choose.
In a place that feels confusing, or hollow, or unfinished.
Hagar’s story reminds us of something we often forget:
God does not wait for us to get it right before He meets us.
He meets us in the wilderness.
He meets us in the questions.
He meets us in the places where we feel most unseen.
And before anything changes externally, He offers something deeper:
to be known, to be seen, and to be held in the middle of it.
If this resonates with you, I occasionally share deeper reflections and guided pages by email. You’re welcome to join me there.
And if you’re in a season where identity feels tangled or unclear, this is the kind of work I walk through with women one-on-one.