Being Seen

As some of you know, I am in the beginning stages of launching a life coaching business that focuses on grief and marriage. I don’t have my website yet, but I have started getting all the things I need to be official, like registering my business name, getting an EIN number and opening a bank account, so that’s exciting. It’s nice to have this year to figure it out. I am hoping to get an actual paying client at some point this year and to have a marriage conference type event figured out for churches too. Then from there we will see what God does with it. For now, I am focusing on finishing up some classes to take a certification exam. You don’t technically have to become certified to be a life coach, but I have always had to be certified or registered somehow in every job I’ve had so it seems more legitimate and natural to have one. Anway, that is my plan and what I’ve been up to.

In my Powerful Questions class today we did a strengths recognition exercise. The instructor asked for a volunteer and not really wanting to but also not being able to stand the silence, I volunteered. She asked me to tell her about something in my past that I am most proud of accomplishing. I wasn’t sure what to go with at first because talking about the past always leads to the present situation of grief from the loss of my son and well this is only the second class. I barely know my classmates’ names! So, I went with what I thought was a low key, non-emotional accomplishment: getting an A in college algebra which helped me get three different degrees.

It felt a little stupid saying it out loud, but it is true. I am not good at math, and it was a struggle that I’m sure my husband still has nightmares about as he had to help me. This led to mentioning that I earned all my degrees (a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees) while married with three children.

She asked what my kids thought about my educational accomplishment and that made me laugh. I told her that all of them seem to have inherited my love of learning, although Rick has that too. Gage was in college for his second time working on his bachelor’s in political science. Aidan is currently back in school to earn his associate degree in nursing after getting a bachelor’s degree in biology and Connor, well he’d stay in school three more years to take every possible computer class if he could, that’s how much he loves college.

My instructor asked if there was anything else, so I mentioned my daughter-in-law and two grandsons living with us, taking high school students to Europe, leading a mission trip to Haiti, and taking in foreign exchange students from Romania and Germany when their original host families turned out bad. All of things that were never on my to-do list. I mentioned how we are making Thanksgiving dinner tonight on February 12, because our current student never got to have one. And then I joked about how my sons are always wondering what stray I might bring home next. She thanked me for sharing and then asked the rest of the class, all who have never seen me in person or on video as this is an audio only class, to list my strengths.

Here are the words (strengths) they associated with me.

Perseverance, Non-Conventional, Ambitious, Courageous, Love, Perspective, Kindness, Generosity, Bravery, Humility, Integrity, Love of Learning, Humor, Gratitude, Appreciation, Organizer, Leader, Selflessness, Social Responsibility

It’s very humbling to hear what others think of you. Especially when you know they don’t know anything about you other than what they just heard. The instructor asked me what I thought and good thing that it was an audio only class because I was fighting back the tears and losing. Why? I don’t know. More healing to do I guess, but I managed to say that I was honored to be described with those words.

I don’t see myself in all of them. Some of them yes. I know that I love and love deeply and I know that I love to learn, but I also know how selfish I am and how much I grumble about life and how messy my desk is. I know how many times a day I lose my temper and how lazy I can be. I know I have high expectations of other people and I’m not always nice when I express those expectations. It meant a lot to me that complete strangers, all be it all life coaches trained in this stuff, could see these character strengths in me during a five-minute conversation. And these strengths actually all appeared in my character strength profile that we had to do for class. It’s just weird having people talk about you. I guess it was also an exercise in experiencing what a client might experience.

Anyway, my emotional response had me decide to journal after class to process the list of words and to contemplate my very strong reaction to them. I know some of it is I want to be able to do for others what they had just done for me, they saw me. The me that’s there when I’m not messing up or under stress or not being real. That’s what I want to be for someone else. Someone who sees them for who God created them to be. I’ve always tried to do that with the teens I worked with. I tried to see their strengths and the potential that they couldn’t see yet. To look at them as God’s creation with a plan and a purpose. To speak into their lives for who they will be not just for who they were at that moment. And that’s what this exercise did for me. It doesn’t see all that has happened or all that I am feeling today or this week, it was only a five-minute snapshot of something from my past that I was proud of accomplishing. And it reminded me that once again I am more than my past, my mistakes, my accomplishments. I am a child of God, a treasured possession, loved and endowed with specific character strengths that will be (are) used to help someone else.

And so, I will hang onto this list of strengths, and I will lean into them when I can’t see them in myself. I will use them as a reminder that God knows me, that He created me for a purpose and on purpose and that He can and will use my life to glorify His plan. I thank you, Lord, for my strengths. Help me to see them and to cultivate them and to use them for your glory. AMEN.

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Revelation 4:11

Originally Posted on Substack on February 12, 2026