🌿 Sacred Survival 2 — Hagar ⭐

 

Hagar and The God Who Sees Survival

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Part I — Hagar

There is a story in Scripture that does not begin in a sanctuary but in dust. It unfolds in heat, in silence, in the wide aching geography where people go when staying begins to cost more than leaving. Her name was Hagar. 🌬️

Scripture says, “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the wilderness.” — Genesis 16:7

She was not lost to God in the wilderness. She was found there. 💧

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Hagar had been carried into a family system she did not choose, placed beneath expectations she did not consent to, and shaped by dynamics that were not built to protect her. Her safety depended on the decisions of others. And slowly, invisibly, her nervous system learned the shape of pressure, the language of harm, the ache of being necessary but not cherished. 🌫️

When pregnancy deepened her vulnerability, the strain only tightened. And eventually, her body made the decision her mind could not yet form words for — she ran. 🌬️

Scripture does not describe rebellion. It describes survival. 🔥

“The Lord has heard of your misery.” — Genesis 16:11 📜

God met her in the wilderness not with correction but with water. He tended her body before He addressed her future, showing that survival matters to Heaven before theology ever does. 💧

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And it is here that Hagar did something no one else in Scripture had ever done before her.

“She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me.’” — Genesis 16:13 ⭐

She named Him El Roi.

The God who sees survival.

Later, when Hagar and her son were again pushed into the wilderness, Scripture says,

“God heard the boy crying… and said to Hagar, ‘Do not be afraid.’” — Genesis 21:17 🫧

Even in exile, God did not withdraw.

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Hagar returned — not unseen — but named, promised, and carrying the voice of God inside her bones.

“You will be called by a new name.” — Isaiah 62:2 ⭐

“I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” — Isaiah 43:19 🌿

This is not a story about running.

It is a story about being found.

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Part II — Kindred Spirit

There has always been something in Hagar’s story that feels familiar — not as a mirror, but as a kinship. Not as sameness, but as recognition. ⭐

Being adopted meant being placed into a family system that could not be negotiated. Safety had to be learned instead of assumed. Childhood trauma shaped the nervous system before language could explain it. Bullying followed from hallway to hallway, carving anxiety into muscle memory and teaching the body that belonging could be withdrawn without warning. 🫧

Loneliness became a climate rather than a season.

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Teenage pregnancy added new weight to an already fragile foundation. Pressure hardened into permanence. Permanence became marriage. Marriage became harm. There were years of rebellion. There were seasons of acting out. There were choices shaped by fear, abandonment, and survival instincts that were louder than reason. 🌊

Later, borderline personality disorder finally gave language to what had lived in the body for decades — the unrealistic but relentless fear of abandonment, the internal alarms that never powered down, the sense that connection was always conditional.

Rock bottom was not a metaphor. It was lived. 🪨

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And that was where God came.

Not with lectures.

Not with folded arms.

But with presence. 🫶

He held what was breaking.

He steadied what was sinking.

He lifted what could no longer lift itself.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” — Psalm 34:18 🌤️

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3 🫧

“Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” — 1 Kings 19:7 🍞

God tends bodies before destinies.

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Hagar’s words did not feel distant at rock bottom.

They felt true.

Because survival does not ask to be poetic.a

It asks to be seen. 👀

And El Roi — the God who sees survival — has always known exactly where to find those who are barely holding on. ⭐

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