My Top 3 Lessons in 2023
Aka, the wilderness.
I’ve been meaning to write a blog post after hitting 40 days post-job termination. It’s only fitting that I get around to writing something like that on the last day of one of my most marking years yet.
If you’ve been following along on my Instagram, you’ve seen some posts about this. This blog post will be an extended version of those posts, without the character limits of social media. :)
God taught me so much in 2023, a year that’s definitely giving “pressed but not crushed.”
Part of embracing the unexpected journey of this current wilderness that launched from being suddenly terminated so disgracefully is being thankful for lessons learned in the uncomfortable uncertainty. The Lord planted these seeds earlier in the year, and it’s like He shined His glorious light on them with life-giving waterings in a profound way more recently.
With the Lord, navigating the unknown of the wilderness has led to a completely different kind of growth for me. Lessons in the wilderness can truly be life-changing even when painful.
I hope you find some encouragement in these insights for your own journey. Take what you need, and feel free to reach out in the comments section at the end of this post to share some of your own learned lessons from your wilderness season(s).
It wasn’t easy to choose only 3, but nevertheless ~
Here are my Top 3 Lessons in 2023:
1.) The wilderness reveals the bondage that your discomfort will tell you is a better option to revert to than reaching for freedom.
One of two things will happen as a result of the wilderness. Either you will become more bound to the bondage you didn’t realize was there, or you will choose the freedom of the Lord once your eyes are opened to said bondage.
You all, I am walking in a new-found freedom like I NEVER have before. I am so thankful we serve a God Who will never give up on me even when others do. God is sovereign in using the imperfections of imperfect people for our good. How unstoppable does that make us because of Jesus? Such an encouraging reminder for our souls.
That’s not to say I always understand why things had to happen the painful ways they have, but being able to trust God’s heart for me is always good makes it so I don’t really need understanding for the former part ~ just acceptance.
This wilderness could have crushed me. Instead, it has refined me. Instead, the Lord has used it to prune off what’s been weighing me down. You know in the movie “Captain Marvel” where Carol Danvers takes off the lil controller on her neck, realizing she’s been fighting with one armed tied behind her back? She asks, “What would happen if I’m finally free?” Then her full potential is realized, and she glows and soars in space and such.
That’s how I feel! The boundaries from my past that I’ve been taught to exist within have been revealed for what they are, and I’m breaking free. God has been crumbling the structures I’d built out of the faux security I’d learned to strive for from others, and now a new confidence in the Lord is blooming out of the rubble. Sure, there’s debris everywhere as the dust settles. But the debris is making the ground fertile. As I look at the surrounding debris, I’m lighter.
I was never created for the bondage I had become so accustomed to. On my own, I would have never left the bondage that was dressed up in fancy jobs in the spotlight. The wilderness may attempt to cloud the beauty to be found in my current situation, but the Lord has given me eyes to see what a gift this freedom is. Kinda like the Israelites when they were freed from their slavery in Egypt and met new challenges in the wilderness that tempted them to believe they were better off in Egypt. Trusting in the Lord didn’t take away from the fact that they were very much in the wilderness, but it gave them a divine perspective on what God was doing.
2.) When you’re misunderstood, remembering the quality of the relationship behind the misunderstandings will help you delineate whether it’s worth your energy to address those or not.
The more life I live, especially in any form of ministry, the more I learn how often things are assumed, on every side.
You know what helped me navigate incorrect and painful assumptions of me in the wilderness?
One for sure is learning contentment in the Lord when I’m misunderstood and letting people be wrong about me. This has been vital.
Also, realizing that these issues didn’t exist among the quality relationships with people who actually know me and have been walking with me and Chad through this wilderness. It was only with the people who think they know me because they follow me on social media, were previously led in worship by me on a stage, have been around me at church-related events, or didn’t have the kind of relationship with me to just ask me about stuff that didn’t sit well with them instead of discussing how they feel about it with other people.
It helped to remember that people often mislabel that which they’re uncomfortable with. But, you don’t have to choose to be bound by the shackles those mislabels attempt to throw on your wrists. You don’t have to shy away from bringing to light the tough things that need to be addressed just because others do. You can instead learn through the process what is and isn’t yours to hold.
This helped me release the misunderstandings of those people, which can easily feel like the majority if I’m not careful to see the good and look at what’s really going on underneath the surface. This goes back to the freedom piece in point 1. The Lord revealing to me the true nature and non-weight of others’ wrong opinions of me is worth this wilderness, because I needed to be rid of that idol. I wouldn’t have learned this lesson the same way I have if not for this season.
(Hint, hint: future post coming soon about my confessions as an ex-vocational-ministry-er.)
3.) Healing takes time, it can happen from the same thing over and over again, and it looks different for everyone.
Giving yourself grace in how the Lord reveals your healing will help you accept all the unexpected changes that come, both in relationships you thought you had on lock and in yourself. This is especially true when your healing doesn’t look the way others expect it to.
People don’t really think about what they would do if they were going through what you’re going through. They really just think about how they prefer you to act based on their comfort and limited knowledge not being in your shoes, and then place themselves as the hero of what they’ve deemed the “correct” way to go about things. As you’re figuring out how to move forward in your very raw and very real pain, if you stumble and mess up, here’s your fair warning that this will not usually be met with grace and understanding from the majority of others.
Think about it: no one has known the you that is walking through what you’re walking through, because you’ve never been here before. So no one holds the authority to tell you whether you’re being “yourself” in how you journey. Only the Lord knows that. His healing and freedom rising up in you will look how it looks, and people may or may not have an issue with it. But that doesn’t determine the value of the better you you’re becoming.
Your healing is worth the messiness of navigating how to embrace it. Others may not have the capacity to hold space for your imperfections as you claw for a hint of streams in the desert. But God has all the capacity in existence for it.
Stay close to the Holy Spirit as you journey. He will give you not only the forgiveness for others in how they harshly treat or misunderstand your healing, but also the forgiveness for yourself.
2023 was wilderness. If you feel similarly, I’m here to remind you: Your story doesn’t end in the wilderness, friend. Your story doesn’t end in 2023.
The peace and the joy of the Lord always exist, even in the midst of chaos, even in the midst of the unknown. We just need to open our eyes to see His peace and His joy.
May your 2024 be lighter, even as you continue walking through the wilderness. Remember that these 3 things discussed above — bondage, being misunderstood, and healing — will look different in each encounter with them. Allow yourself to learn again and again with the Lord. Be kind to yourself. Embrace the solitude of the wilderness, because the Lord is doing a new thing there.
Others may not recognize the you that emerges, and that’s okay. You don’t need them to understand the storms you weathered, the rugs soaked in your tears, or the temptations you’ve resisted. El Roi, the God Who Sees You, knows.
And that is enough.
Happy New Year.
~ Adaeze
