Do you ever feel invisible?
Ann Masters was a well-known and much beloved woman in the Roanoke Valley. After beginning her career as a kindergarten teacher, she went on to serve, first, as the Director of Marketing and Curator of the Art Museum of Western Virginia and then as the Executive Director of Clean Valley Council. Her unexpected death has left a void that her friends, her family, and those of us in her church still feel every day.
A few weeks before Ann died, she forwarded to me a video clip titled, “The Invisible Woman.”
The clip begins with Nicole Johnson’s dawning recognition that she has become “invisible.” Like so many wives and mothers, she walks into the room, says “Turn the TV down,” and nothing happens. She says it again, a little louder, “Turn the TV down,” and still nothing happens. Finally, she has to walk over to the television and turn down the volume herself.
A few days later, she is at a party with her husband. After three hours, she has grown tired and wants to go home. She goes over to her husband, who is talking with a colleague from work, but her husband never even looks her way.
The epiphany comes when she goes with her son to school and the teacher asks her son, “Who is that with you?” and her son says, “Nobody.”
It was then that she realized that she had become invisible.
At first, her invisibility felt like an affliction. But things changed when her friend Janice gave her a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.
The book marvels at these mammoth, wondrous cathedrals—these works that seem to reach up into the very heavens and are awash with a rainbow of colors.
As Nicole read the book, what struck her were the thousands and thousands of people who poured their skills and talents into these extraordinary works and yet their names are almost completely unknown. Nicole notes, “They gave their whole lives for a work that they would never see finished.” Some of these immense and breath-taking cathedrals took over a hundred years to build–more years than even a father, a son, or a grandson would see—and yet, day after day, these workmen “made personal sacrifices for no credit, showing up at a job that they would never see finished, for a building that their name would never be on.”
Wives and mothers who are reading this will understand that feeling all too well.
What most touched Nicole was what Janice had inscribed on the inside cover of the book:
“With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.”
As we approach this Mother’s Day, maybe it is wise for all of us—mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers—to realize that much of what we do day by day for the people we love may largely go unnoticed and unrecognized. The thousand different invisible kindnesses that we do may never garner a word of thanks or appreciation. But those quiet often unseen acts are every bit as important as the stones, the timbers, and the stained glass that make up a Notre Dame de Paris or a Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
“There’s a story,” Nicole shares, “about one of the builders who was carving a tiny bird inside a beam that would be covered over by a roof, and someone came up to him and said, ‘Why are you spending so much time on something no one will ever see?’ And it’s reported that builder replied, ‘Because God sees.’”
Please know that your son may not see, your daughter may not see, your husband may not see, your wife may not see, your pastor may not see, your colleague at work may not see, or your next door neighbor may not see—but God sees and, what’s more, it touches God’s very heart.
Gary Robbins formerly served as the chaplain at Ferrum College and Shenandoah University. He now serves as the pastor of Greene Memorial United Methodist Church in downtown Roanoke. He may be reached at [email protected].