By Lisa Jacobson
Note from Barbara: Recently I read the following blog post by Lisa Jacobson, and I enjoyed it so much that I received permission from Lisa to run it here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and if you want to read more from Lisa, go to lisajacobson.substack.com.
It should have been an easy lunch. A longtime friend, a comfortable conversation, the biggest decision being whether to order the steak salad or the chicken bowl.
But as we sat there, menus in hand, she mentioned a small group she’d been enjoying. Curious, I asked who was in it. She began listing names—and I knew almost all of them. The soft clink of silverware carried on around us, as though nothing had changed.
I hadn’t been invited.
I tried to shrug it off. Told myself it was probably too far to drive anyway, that I was older than most of them, that I wasn’t in that season of life anymore. But the ache was there all the same. We kept talking, my friend completely unaware of the silent unraveling happening across the table.
And then there was more. She mentioned a book club she’d been part of this past year—and yes, I hadn’t been invited to that either. This one stung more. I love books. I would have loved that kind of gathering. And again, I knew many of the women—women I would have considered friends. I found myself staring down at my chicken bowl, suddenly not very hungry.
I asked questions—what they were reading, what was coming next—because I really was interested. But I kept swallowing the real one: Why wasn’t I invited?
I gave myself a little pep talk. Do you even have time for another commitment? Why are you making this a big deal? You’re a grown woman. This isn’t high school.
None of it was working.
Then came the final layer. She mentioned a larger community event—one I hadn’t even heard about. The kind of thing that, in years past, I might have been asked to help lead. That’s when I felt the lump rising in my throat.
“Lisa Michelle,” I told myself, “you are 60 years old. You’re too old to take this personally.”
But that’s just it. It did feel personal. How could it not? Because moments like this have a way of reaching back—touching old places we thought we’d outgrown. The quiet sting of being left out. Uninvited. Overlooked.
Maybe you’ve felt it too.
I carried it home with me, that tender bruise, and set it down somewhere I couldn’t quite reach. A few days later, I told a dear friend, “I just want to know where to put this one.” How to sort it out instead of letting it swirl somewhere deep in my gut.
She laughed softly—one of those knowing laughs. And then she said something I hadn’t expected. She encouraged me to give grace to the ones who hadn’t thought to include me. Not to assign motives. To consider that it might have simply slipped their minds, or that they didn’t know I would have wanted to come. Possibilities I hadn’t even considered.
Then she told me her own story—one that made mine feel small by comparison. By the time she finished, I just held the phone.
“So where do you put something like that?” I asked.
“I had to give it to the Lord,” she said, “and lay it down by the creek. Now, whenever I see that creek, I remember—it’s not mine to carry anymore.”
She couldn’t see my face over the phone, but I had tears in my eyes. Thinking of that wound, and her leaving it there by the rushing water.
I’ve been sitting with that image ever since—and thinking about how many of us are carrying things we were never meant to hold onto. How quickly we fill in the gaps. We tell ourselves a story about what it meant, about what it said about us, without ever stopping to ask if the story is even true.
What if it had merely slipped their minds? What if they hadn’t realized I would have wanted to come? Those questions helped—they loosened something. But eventually I had to face the harder one: What if I really had been overlooked?
That’s where the ache settled in again, deeper this time. Because it was no longer about their invitation. It was about something raw and more tender: my sense of my own worth.
I know what I believe. I believe I am His workmanship—made for something, called to something, prepared for good works long before any of this (Ephesians 2:10). And I believe, as Jeremiah 31:3 puts it, that I am loved with an everlasting love — drawn with an unfailing kindness that doesn’t fluctuate with someone’s guest list. I’ve believed these things for decades. But the truest things are often the hardest to feel when you’re sitting alone with a question no one answered.
So I didn’t just remind myself of the words. I had to let them do their slow work—return to them on the hard mornings, hold them when the question tried to come back. Sit with them until something steadied. Not because the hurt disappeared, but because it found its proper place.
Being included feels good. It always will. But it was never meant to be the measure of who we are.
And then, almost without realizing it, the question turned. Because how often have I done the same? Gone about my days, making plans, gathering people, without stopping to think about who might be on the outside — not out of cruelty or even carelessness, just because I didn’t think of them. Because I know now, more than ever, how much it can cost someone, to not be thought of.
So I’ve been asking the Lord to make me more aware — more willing to widen the circle, even in small ways. To send the text. To extend the invitation. To think one person further than I naturally would. Not out of guilt, but because I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that forgetting.
And maybe that’s part of laying it down. Not just releasing the hurt, but letting it change what I do next.
If you’re carrying something like this — a lunch you’re still turning over, an invitation that never came — I hope you find your own creek. The place where you can leave it and walk away lighter. And I hope, when you’re the one making the plans, you remember who might be waiting to be asked.
A Closing Blessing
I pray that you will set down what you were never meant to carry—that the ache of being overlooked will find its proper place, and that you will walk away lighter than you came.
May you know, in the deepest places, that you are His workmanship—loved with a love that no guest list could ever measure or diminish.
I lift you up to the God who sees every quiet wound and wastes nothing—and I ask Him to redeem this one. To use it to soften your heart, widen your circle, and make you the kind of woman who remembers to ask.
In His grace,
Lisa Jacobson
