Pee-Pie! I See You!

Do you say ‘peek-a-boo or pee-pie when you play the hiding game with babies? When my grandbaby started getting the game, he would hide behind the ottoman and pop his head up to look at me. I shared the moment in a phone video to his parents. My son texted back ‘what are you saying? It sounds like pee pie?’ 

That’s when I realized I had not passed that bit of heritage down to my kids.  I grew up playing ‘pee-pie’ from my southern grandparents. Then I moved further north and converted to ‘peek-a-boo.' And reverted back to ‘pee-pie’ with my grandbaby. Researching it on Proper Southern Woman I confirmed that it is a southern thing. Either way, we usually follow it with “I see you!”

I guess it starts that young. We want others to see us.  We want to be visible. We want acknowledgment. We want people to look up from the sidewalk or their phone with eyes that say “I see you. We are here in this place together.” I admit I like for people to notice I’m here. But it delights me when the Lord sees me. The God who sees me.

One of my favorite names for God is the one Hagar used in the wilderness.

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”  Genesis 16:13

Hagar was alone.  Her employer had the gall to ask her to sleep with her husband to provide a child for him.  Then she hated Hagar for doing what she had requested. So Hagar fled and found herself out on the street, pregnant and thirsty. She found a fountain of water, where she had an unusual encounter with an angel. He told her to go back to her employer; back to the difficult situation.  God did not fix it all for her. She was still going to have her boss’s husband’s baby. Awkward! Her employer still despised her. Unfair!

But for that moment, in the darkness of her situation, she recognized a God who saw her. She saw that He saw her. And that divine acknowledgment was enough for that day.

Hagar must have returned with a new perspective on her unchanged situation. Her employer’s hateful behavior grew worse rather than better. And years later she would kick her out onto the streets, where Hagar and her son would be alone again. This time when they ran out of water, she resigned that death would take her boy. Then the God who saw her once before, saw her again.  This time, He opened her eyes to find a well of water that would save her boy’s life.

There may have been problems in your life that you wished the Lord would just fix. “Get me out of it” or “Remove it” you may have begged. But instead He just said “I see you” and that turned out to be enough.