THE INVISIBLE WOMAN -FEMEIA INVIZBILA

The Invisible Woman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YU0aNAHXP0&feature=player_एम्बेद्देद
[Audience applause]
It started to happen gradually.
I would walk into a room
and say something
and noone would notice.
I would say, "Turn the TV down, please,"
and nothing would happen.
So, I would get louder.
"Turn the TV down, please!"
Finally, I would have to go over and turn the TV down myself.
And then I started to notice it elsewhere.


My husband and I had been at a party for about three hours and I was ready to go.
I looked over and he was talking to a friend from work and I walked over and
...he kept right on talking.
He didn't even turn toward me.
That's when I started to put it together.
[Laugh] He can't see me.
[Audience laughs] I'm invisible. I'm invisible!
Then I started to notice it more and more.
I would walk my son to school and his teacher would say,
"Jake, who's that with you?" and my son would say, "Nobody."
[Audience laughs] Granted, he's just five, but, nobody?
One night a group of us gathered
and we were celebrating the return of a friend from England
Janice had just taken this fabulous trip and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in
and I was sitting there looking around at the other women at the table.
I'd put my make-up on in the car on the way there.
I had on an old dress because it was the only thing clean and I had my unwashed hair pulled up in a banana clip
and I was feeling pretty darn pathetic.
And then Janice turned to me and she said,
"I brought you this."
[Sigh] It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.
I didn't understand.
And then I read her inscription.
She wrote, "With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when noone sees."
You can't name the names of the people who built the great cathedrals.
Over and over again looking at these mamoth works,
you scan down to find the names and it says, "Builder: unknown, unknown, unknown."
They completed things not knowing that anyone would notice.
There's a story 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 noone wi ll ever see?"
And it's reported that the builder replied, "[Sigh] Because God sees."
They trusted that God saw everything.
They gave their whole lives for a work
-- a mammoth work --
they would never see finished.
They showed up day after day.
Some of these cathedrals took over a hundred years to build.
That was more than one working man's lifetime.
Day after day.
And they made personal sacrifices for no credit.
Showing up at a job they would never see finished for a building their name would never be on.
One writer even goes so far as to say,
"No great cathedrals will ever be built again
because so few people are willing to sacrifice to that degree."
I closed the book
and it was as if I heard God say,
"I see you.
You are not invisible to me.
No sacrifice is too small for me to notice.
I see every cupcake baked,
every sequen sewn on
and I smile over everyone.
I see every tear of disappointment when things don't go the way you want them to go.
But, remember
you are building a great cathedral.
It will not be finished in your lifetime.
And sadly, you will never get to live there.
But, if you build it well, I will."
At times, my invisibility has felt like an affliction to me,
but it is not a disease that is erasing my life.
It is the cure for the disease of self-centeredness.
[Sigh] It is the antidote to my own pride.
It's ok that they don't see.
It's ok that they don't know.
I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college,
"You're not gonna believe what my mom does.
She gets up at four in the morning and she bakes pies and hand bastes a turkey and she presses all the linens.
Even if I do all those things,
I don't want him to say that.
I want him to want to come home.
And, secondly, I want him to say to his friend,
"You're gonna love it there."
It's ok that they don't see.
We don't work for them.
We work for Him.
We sacrifice for Him.
They will never see, not if we do it right, not if we do it well.
Let's pray that our work will stand as a monument to an even greater God.
[Audience applause].


Femeia Invizibila

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY7jT_yIK2U&feature=player_embedded#