To Anyone Walking This Season With Me

If you’re here, I know this probably isn’t where you thought you’d be.

It’s not where I thought I’d be either.

Some days this season feels louder than everything else.

It follows us into conversations we didn’t plan for.

Into announcements we brace ourselves to hear.

Into prayers that feel heavier than they used to.

And somewhere in the quiet, we start wondering what the waiting means, what it says about us…

and sometimes, what it says about God.

I don’t have tidy answers.

But I’ve been noticing something in Scripture that I can’t unsee.

God didn’t just work despite barren seasons.

He worked through them, in ways that changed everything.

Sarah could have had a child early.

Nothing was stopping God from that.

But if she had, the story would have looked completely different.

Her son wouldn’t have been a promise, he would have been expected.

Her laughter wouldn’t have mattered.

Her disbelief wouldn’t have been written into Scripture.

The covenant wouldn’t have been clearly God’s doing, it could have been mistaken for good timing.

Instead, God waited.

Long enough that no one could confuse the outcome with human ability.

And in that waiting, Sarah learned that God wasn’t afraid of her cynicism.

He stayed close enough to hear her laugh, not because He needed her faith to be stronger, but because He wanted her to know who was really holding the story.

Christianity’s foundation was built on a promise that could not be self-made.

That matters more than we often realize.

Hannah could have had children without anguish.

But if she had, there would have been no whispered prayer at the temple.

No pouring out of grief so deep it looked like drunkenness.

No moment where God showed us that He listens to pain before polish.

And if Hannah hadn’t known barrenness, Israel may never have known Samuel, the prophet who would anoint kings, who would guide a nation through transition, who would stand at the hinge point of history.

Her waiting shaped the kind of prayer that shaped a prophet.

God didn’t just answer Hannah.

He used her season of sorrow to bring leadership and direction to an entire people.

Rachel could have had children without comparison.

Without envy.

Without watching someone else receive what she longed for.

But if she had, we wouldn’t have this honest picture of longing, of desire that hurts, of prayers tangled with jealousy and desperation.

Rachel’s story tells us that God is not repelled by messy emotions.

He writes them into holy history.

And her son, Joseph, the one whose life would save nations from famine, was born into a story already marked by waiting and longing.

God didn’t bypass Rachel’s ache.

He wove it into redemption.

Elizabeth could have had children earlier too.

Nothing prevented it.

But if she had, John the Baptist would not have stood where he did in history, bridging the Old Testament prophets and the coming of Christ.

Her long wait placed her son exactly where he needed to be

to prepare the way for Jesus.

Elizabeth’s righteousness wasn’t proven by her pregnancy.

It was established long before it.

Her story reminds us that delay is not denial, sometimes it is divine positioning.

When I look at these women, I can’t help but notice this:

If their timelines had been shorter, the story of Scripture would have been smaller.

God wasn’t punishing them.

He wasn’t forgetting them.

He was writing something larger than what they could see from inside the waiting.

And still, He was gentle with them in it.

I don’t know how this ends for us.

I don’t know what God will do.

But I’m starting to believe that God’s faithfulness isn’t something we’ll only recognize in hindsight.

Sometimes it looks like staying.

Listening.

Holding the story steady when everything feels uncertain.

The Bible doesn’t ask us to be cheerful here.

It just refuses to abandon us in it.

God doesn’t seem offended by our exhaustion.

He doesn’t pull back when hope feels fragile.

He doesn’t disappear when prayers go unanswered.

So if all you can do today is stay. 

Stay praying. 

Stay waiting. 

Stay honest. 

I believe that counts.

You are not walking through a meaningless delay.

And you are not walking through it alone.

God has always done some of His most important work in the seasons that felt like nothing was happening at all.

I’m here with you.

And I believe He is too.