IF YOU EVER feel invisible, ignored, and overlooked as though you blend in with the wallpaper when you’re with a group of people, the loneliness you feel can be overwhelming. Author Cheri Strange knows this feeling herself and wants to help you rediscover your true value. Her new book, Can You See Me, Now? Good news for the lonely, left out, and less than may provide a path to new hope and renewal for anyone in this situation. As a national speaker and visionary of She Yearns Ministries and her popular YouVersion Bible reading plans, Cheri has already successfully helped many women redefine their worth.

Linda: Why did you write this book?

Cheri: The initial reason for writing this book lies with my own history. This is my story: a place of pain and how God delivered me through it while my circumstances did not change. It wasn’t long before I noticed the same familiar pain points showing up in the lives of my daughters. I have six daughters originating from three different continents and cultures. My thought was to privately offer them encouragement and biblical guidance when facing these issues.

It wasn’t long before I recognized the issues were more widespread. No longer was it just me, and my daughters, but half the population. Experts estimate we are the loneliest society on record in the last fifty years. A large majority have felt left out or always feel that way. What these realities illuminate is that most women have come to know the sting of not being missed and would like it to be different. This 75-day journey equips a woman familiar with loneliness and being passed over to understand her value and enables her to experience the personal change necessary for becoming seen even if or when her circumstances remain the same. 

Linda: Who is your book written for?

Cheri: Can You See Me, Now? is for any woman who has ever been left out of the group, felt alone, or insignificant, and it offers a biblical path forward. It’s a 75-day journey toward genuine transformation with a guide and a personal plan to help you experience it.

Linda: Since this subject is so personal, I imagine it required a certain amount of vulnerability. What was the most difficult part of writing Can You See Me Now?

Cheri: The greatest challenge I faced in crafting Can You See Me, Now? was writing the beginning. It comes from such a private place of pain, getting it out in words ushered in all sorts of emotions, but this personal element wasn’t always there. In fact, the first time I submitted the manuscript, I did not utilize my own experiences. The criticism I received was the absence of a personal touch, or soul, which was intentional. Who wants to tell their inner struggles to strangers? Not me.

Rather than write the revealing, I filed it in a drawer. But when the world shut down in 2020, I had time to reconsider and pray. Yes. The message was incomplete without my journey infused. Oh, it’s not what we would consider traumatic. It’s just my ordinary experiences. And that, I realized, was the missing centerpiece. As I wrote, the emotions turned from regurgitating the pain, the failures, and the missteps to thanksgiving for the transformation in my own life that can be the reader’s as well. The path toward becoming seen is not limited to where we originate or even where we are today, but is cultivated through the Word of God, one day at a time.

Linda: I know that must be a blessing to your readers. Why did you choose to format Can You See Me Now into daily readings?

Cheri: Can You See Me, Now? leans toward being more devotional in style and pacing, divided into 75-daily readings that should take only a few minutes to read. That structure and design is on purpose. I have been writing for YouVersion, the Bible app, for several years. My readership largely develops from what is available on the app, and I have found this style and genre to be my sweet spot. I enjoy providing thematic Bible reading plans, utilizing Scripture to investigate a common theme. These are written in doable chunks for busy women with an invitation to make it personal, each day. This style of writing allows me to help make the teachings of the Bible and the whole of Christianity accessible to this generation. For me, there is no higher calling.

Linda: What would you say to the woman who is experiencing the life you describe to encourage her when she feels unseen and alone?

Cheri: This book is my best effort to answer this question without all the mistakes and missteps I took across so many years. The one thing I did right was call out to the God I wasn’t even sure loved me as an individual. I would suggest that God’s desire for your life is not to blend into the wallpaper or feel worthless. Start learning how God sees you and what He desires for your life. Let Him transform you one day at a time and even if your circumstances do not change, you can. And that makes all the difference.

Linda: What do you hope the reader will take away from your book, Can You See Me Now?

Cheri: It is my hope that the reader gets the sense that she is not alone in her loneliness. But comradery in our places of pain is not enough to draw us out of it or make us different. This journey means to illuminate how God sees her, how He can heal her, re-calibrate her, if needed, and draw her toward becoming who He created her to be. My desire is that she learns not to stop seeking, to ask God to fill her emptiness, to be willing to fail forward, and to make room in her life for becoming visible. If she internalizes these gleanings, she can work her plan for leaving the shadows and the lingering loneliness to become seen for all the right reasons in all the right ways.

Linda: What a hopeful message. But, Cheri, you haven’t always been a writer. What motivated you to do what you are doing? 

Cheri: If my life were left up to me and my desires, I would be somewhere on a back row content in obscurity, teaching history at high school. But that was not God’s plan. I feel like the prophet Amos who, when questioned about why he was doing what he was doing said, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore fig trees. But the LORD took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go…’” (Amos 7:14-15) More than anything, my motivation for speaking, teaching, and writing is derived from the path marked out for me by the Lord. I did not choose it, nor did I desire it. I had another career, altogether. But this responsibility is obedience for me.

Linda: I assume that as a wife of thirty years you’ve had your challenges. What have you learned that you would want to share with a newly married couple?

Cheri: Chad and I entered marriage knowing full well it could end badly if we did not work on it. And the statistics are worse for those pursuing graduate school, which both of us completed. We intentionally set up safeguards, like restricting contact with old flames no matter how small the flicker had been. There would be no lunches or dinners with the opposite sex who is not family, and no going to bed without working out the problem or difficulty between us. We also sought out advice for finances and parenting. Still, the best thing we did for our marriage was establish our own daily walking with the Lord. Although we have hurt each other deeply, not behaving the way we should, this practice, alone, has allowed us to find common ground when our opinions differed, to seek forgiveness when we hurt the other, and love with the other in mind.

Linda: You’ve had some unique challenges as well. Please tell us some of the challenges you’ve experienced by adopting internationally three times?

Cheri: Nothing prepared us for the years spent building our family through international adoption, or beyond. In six years, we added six children. Five did not speak English, and one is special needs. All experienced trauma early in life with the scars to prove it. It’s not for the faint of heart or the bleeding heart who wants to save the world. It’s kingdom work, against heavenly forces and cannot be overcome short of long stents on your knees. What has enabled our family to grow together rather than become fractured is not our brilliant parenting or that we somehow lucked out with an awesome set of kids. We are a collection of sinners, just like any other family. God alone knows how to love those entrusted to us, and it has been our priority to learn from Him how and what to do, to seek counsel as needed, and to leave our egos at the proverbial curb.

Linda: What project are you looking forward to in the future?

Cheri: I am working on another non-fiction piece that offers a message of hope for the woman who is drinking from a spiritual well, yet remains thirsty for more—of what, she doesn’t know. It answers the question, what if all these needs, these desires, and the debilitating deficits were God-given so that we might find our satisfaction, and fulfillment in Him? Filled with captivating stories, biblical insights, thirst-quenching recipes and other practical resources, the reader will discover how her deepest needs can be fulfilled in Christ.

Linda: Where can people find out more about your book, Can You See Me Now as well as your ministry?

Cheri: You can find my book  Can You See Me, Now? from Bold Vision Books on Amazon, as well as my Bible study, Life Principles for Living Out the Greatest Commandment, from AMG. You can find more about me and my ministry on my website www.sheyearns.com, on the YouVersion app, or Instagram.