“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Isaiah 43:19, ESV

Wilderness wandering.

Desert land.

Valleys.

We draw pictures of hardship during seasons of testing, refining, and persecution through images of entangled vines, endless stretches of hot sand, and low valleys shadowed by seemingly impossible mountains.

These seasons are isolating, depriving, and confusing.

In the months before things fell apart, the Lord kept bringing Isaiah 43:19 to me…I still have the text from a friend from that time who sent it to me.

I thought it was the promise of harvest. In that time, the Lord made it clear that we were to sell our house—I thought it was because He had a home for us. Instead, we stayed in limbo. A place of His absolute provision, but that was not home.

Doors opened for a new place to pursue the ministry I was protecting, and it seemed the Lord was making a way for it to continue. Only, the Lord shut the door firmly when the ministry came to an end. Money dried up, hearts were hurt, and the provision wasn’t the permanent provision I hoped for.

The difficulty of the desert isn’t just the unrelenting heat of the day, the destabilizing cold at night, or the lack of resources. It is the way your body begins to beg, to hyperfocus on what it desperately needs and cannot have. It causes the mind to paint pictures of provision, only for them to fade into a mirage.

Sometimes my desert was like that. I was so desperate to see the Lord, I ran after mirages.

But the desert wasn’t always so dry.

Cool droplets of rain fell—not enough to live on, but enough to survive the next step.

We sold our home. I spent my days in a place that wasn’t my own, but I also watched my daughter dance in sprinklers in the front yard.

We moved our ministry. I wondered if the resource would run out or the floor would fall under us again, but I watched individuals graduate from the ministry and walk into their purpose. Though the doors closed, good happened. Eternal, forever good.

These seasons hurt.

But there will be droplets in the desert.

Glimpses of sunshine through the branches in the wilderness.

Trampled grass paths in the valley.

Today, as I type these words on The Hard Fought Faith, I am reminded that the promise of a new thing didn’t come in my time…in my way… it comes in His.

I see that now.