There’s this thing no one tells you when your life falls apart: if you stop producing, people stop seeing you.
I first noticed it when I told the mother of the little girl who had been my constant companion that I couldn’t keep watching her anymore. I needed to focus on my health and while Scott was sick. And the moment I stepped out of that role, I lost her my shadow. Just…gone... ..completely.
But it happened again shortly after Scott died. The silence after the funeral.
A friend who used to come up weekly vanished. The rest of my "farm family" found other milk, jam elsewhere... and i know they would come back...once I have what they need again. But in the meantime... And I understood, in a brutal, quiet way: I wasn’t loved. I was useful.
And when I stopped being useful, I disappeared.
Over the last five years, I’ve walked through hell with my head down. I wasn’t wallowing. I was surviving. God was refining me, or so I thought. But when the people left—the ones I made excuses for and even the ones who didn’t even try...it started to feel less like refining and more like being burned away.
Firat our girl.. Then, I lost the other half of my soul when I lost Scott. Then, to add insult to injury, 18 hours later Danny couldn't bear to be without Scott (me either!! I just didn't get a choice). I sold half my cattle to survive. The rhythm of my days collapsed. And still, I kept trying to produce. Kept trying to be visible. Kept hoping that if I showed up, someone would show up for me.
But the truth is, life feels shallow in most place now. Realness is rare. Vulnerability is met with silence, not solidarity. And I started wondering: If no one sees me unless I’m producing, and I have nothing left to give, then what am I even still here for?
I believe God left me here for a reason. But I don't know what
it is. I keep trying to be used—by customers, by friends, by the very people who forget me the moment I stop giving. I keep hoping that even if I don’t know how, maybe God is somehow reaching them because of something I said, gave, or did—maybe the impact lives on, even if I never see it.. Because otherwise, this hollow ache, this slow erasure—it feels pointless.
it is. I keep trying to be used—by customers, by friends, by the very people who forget me the moment I stop giving. I keep hoping that even if I don’t know how, maybe God is somehow reaching them because of something I said, gave, or did—maybe the impact lives on, even if I never see it.. Because otherwise, this hollow ache, this slow erasure—it feels pointless.
Some days I want to go home. But I’m still here. So I’ll try again. I’ll write this. I’ll press publish. Not because I believe it will even spark some great revival of care——but because I need to lay one brick. One proof of life.
Even if no one sees it. Even if I still feel invisible. I am not gone. Not yet. Maybe soon. (Some days, I wish I were.)
