Desert Days

Exodus 33:13-15

13 Now if indeed I have found favor in Your sight, please let me know Your ways, that I may know You and find favor in Your sight. Remember that this nation is Your people.”

14 And the LORD answered, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

15 "If Your Presence does not go with us,” Moses replied, “do not lead us up from here.

“Why don’t you trust Me with the moments that hurt?” I was on the elliptical, out of breath, caught somewhere between stride and surrender. In that thin place where oxygen runs low and honesty rises, I often meet God. His voice during these workouts is no surprise. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m so focused in that moment that my thoughts become clear, or if I’m simply too exhausted for a scuffle. Either way, it works for us. Still, I didn’t like this question. Because I do trust Him, truly and deeply. I see Him. I feel Him. I know He is with me in every moment and every space. Yet somehow, He wasn’t wrong (and He never is, but still).

My mind began to race, even faster than my legs, while He waited in the silence. The question wasn’t rhetorical. If I’m honest, I didn’t know the answer at first. But He did. Before I could sift through my memories, He already knew each moment that broke my heart, when I came to Him with tears but held back my heart. He was there, holding my hand through every confusing phone call, every conversation that layered uncertainty over exhaustion. He stood with me in moments of betrayal, present as the wounds were inflicted, long before their pain would fully surface in my life.

He was beside me each morning when I woke up, prayed, encouraged myself, and pieced together hope to face the day. As I sang worship songs in the shower and prayed over my children, He knew exactly what waited for me on the other end of every email, every interaction, every rejection, every moment still ahead. That’s part of why this season feels so offensive. I am not living in a spiritual drought. I am blessed beyond measure, walking in purpose in ways I never could have imagined, and doing so only because He leads me. I see Him more clearly than ever. He is with me. I am surrounded by His presence, yet I feel unfulfilled. I am fed, covered, led, and loved. And still, there are days I feel abandoned, idle, alone, and insecure.

“I don’t trust you with the moments that hurt because they are all still hurting. I love you, but loving you has not stopped any of the pain.” It was a start.

It’s been hard to pinpoint when I started believing that loving God and staying close to Him would somehow fix everything I faced. When did I completely miss the reality of His throne? When did I quietly trade sovereignty for sentiment? How did I miss that not every wound would be healed right away, and not every prayer would be answered how I hoped. 

Now, I know He is God. He has the final say. But today, in this season where he is so presently moving in my life, and so faithful to speak to me, I can’t help but wonder if He has anything at all to say to this pain. 

Even still. I am resolved to love God, even while I accept that our love does not excuse us from suffering. It may actually be quite the opposite: that our devotion qualifies us to suffer with him in a way that lets us learn more of him through tangible lessons of His grace.  

I have loved Him. I have not let go of my faith. I have been determined to walk in the direction He leads, while holding resentment toward this suffering in both hands.

Not out of anger this time.

Sincerely. Unintentionally.

My heart simply has not come up for air. At least not often.

And the moments of relief, so short in supply, rarely exist beyond the few seconds I take to feel the sun on my face and the ground beneath me just to remind myself I am still here. 

And somewhere in those few moments while I chase relief, that grief, unmanaged and withheld from His hands began teaching me a lesson all of its own.

That prayer will not move this pain. 

That there is no need to carry fear to the Father that decides your fate all on his own. 

That you may trust God to never leave you but maybe you can’t trust him to fully see you.

That the God that is faithful to bless you with every provision is somehow still apathetic to your pain. 

That the same King that rules over every affair of creation cannot be bothered by matters as small as your misery.

That you can not risk offending the God that will eventually heal all of the wounds he allows others to inflict. So, conceal them. Carry them. Ignore them, if need be, but promise is ahead and the complication of your pain is yours alone to resolve. 

I keep thinking about the Israelites. They are my “Roman Empire” if you will, a people I think of abnormally often. I love them. They were messy, angry, petty, annoying and everything in between. It got ghetto – which I love because we are them and they are we. 

They were a people who had watched a sea split in front of them, who had walked across on dry ground, who had seen Pharaoh’s armies swallowed whole behind them. A people who had eaten bread that fell from heaven and followed a cloud that moved when God moved. A people who had proof. (Yep. Exactly. That’s you and I too.)

And still, they wandered.

In Numbers 14:33–34, after fear overtook faith, the Lord said they would wander in the wilderness forty years. Wander. Not advance. Not arrive. Wander.

And then in Deuteronomy 2:1, Moses recounts it plainly: “We traveled around Mount Seir for many days.”

Around. Not through. Not beyond. Around! While I would like to envision them literally walking around in one big circle that’s not necessarily the case, but the word does say they traveled around the same mountain for many days.

The distance from Egypt to Canaan was not forty years long. Yet the wait was.

And I, being a person with a problematic attitude and a general lack of patience most days, much like the Israelites, can’t help but wonder what they were feeling the first time the mountain looked somewhat familiar.

Moving through a place of freedom but exhausted from a journey that already felt much longer than what they signed up for, did someone notice quietly before the rest? Was that someone Moses? Did an elder squint at the horizon and recognize the slope? Did a young mother shift the weight of her child and wonder why the view hadn’t really changed? Did someone possibly stumble upon a remnant of the earlier loop around this mountain that may have been left behind? When exactly did the chatter start and who was the one willing to finally raise their voice above a whisper to ask, where are we supposed to be going?

What does it do to a soul to realize you are traveling around the same ground with the same God and the same promise but no arrival in sight? How long does it take for disappointment to set in when you realize that you’ve had your eyes on God this entire journey and still can’t escape the mountain you’re circling?

Because the desert is not just geography. It’s the space between rescue and arrival that is temporary but harsh. It is provision without possession. It is daily bread without tangible futures. It is freedom from what’s last with no glimpse of what’s next. It is unfortunately familiar. 

I am free. Egypt, the only life I have ever known, is behind me. I have seen God move. I have watched Him split waters in my life that I could not have crossed alone. I have eaten manna in seasons that should have starved me and my hope. I have followed His spirit when it moved, often racing to keep pace. Yet still, this moment I’m standing in feels too familiar for my comfort.

I hear God, and choose to trust him. Down through a path of purpose.

Across a few lanes of loneliness.

Always finally turning a corner finding confidence in God.

And then…heartache.

Like a looming landmark of the past casting shade across the bits of hope I am holding, this place feels familiar. 

Sometimes I see it from afar and brace myself as we approach.

Other times I back up right into it unexpectedly.

And I ask myself in confusion, haven’t we passed this place before? Because I’m not lost. I’m actually following a cloud, but something about a truth omitted, a friendship failed, a door closed when it should definitely be opened seems like I’m right back at where we started.

The first reappearance feels like surprise.

The second feels like recognition.

By the third, curiosity turns to frustration. Frustration turns to disappointment. Disappointment turns into silence and distance from the very God who is still leading me. Not because He is gone, but because He is here. Leading me back around this place, past the same points of pain I’d prayed to never see again. 

I wonder how it felt, to abandon the life that you knew and step into a freedom that felt nothing like what you imagined. To leave bondage and still not feel settled. To follow a God who proved Himself undeniable, only to find yourself exhausted in a place you never would have chosen. 

I wonder if the older ones felt the clock ticking in their bones. If they felt urgency pressing against their chests. If they thought, we won’t survive another year of this. How terrified they must have been to see loved ones pass away never touching a promise they had poured all their faith out for. How many tears have we all cried wondering if God, holding the keys to our fate in these moments has missed the reality of time fading away or simply intends on letting us die here, in the in-between. 

I wonder if the younger ones felt cheated. Ready to build. Ready to marry. Ready to plant and possess and prosper. Hungry for more, only to realize they were suspended in a holding pattern with no ETA. How frustrated do we become when our strength and our gifts seem to be put on the shelf while we are consumed with navigating the hard spaces we did not choose and may not deserve.  How do we reconcile unfulfilled longing for the things God has promised and when they are missing from the place that He has led?

Maybe the calf was not complete rebellion. Maybe it was desperation. Desperation for something visible. Desperation for something immediate. Desperation for a God they could measure when the One they trusted felt too silent in His delay.

The desert is such an empty place. A place of provision. A place of instruction. But it’s dry, nonetheless. So dry, that naturally, things begin to die. 

The Israelites knew this so well that they cried out that at least there were graves back in Egypt and that was NOT nostalgia. It was a realization that the place they were in hurt so deeply that even the familiarity of death would have brought them comfort. They were so lost in frustration with a God who had seemingly failed them that a tangible death was the lesser evil than a life of more circular faith. 

What an agony it must be to give up in the desert. To be so desperate for relief but so void of hope that your only remaining frustration is that God’s promises feel so unfulfilled they have failed you even in the matter of death. To believe that the Lord lacks consideration for your future but also even for your misery.

To question that if God knew your pursuit of Him would end this painfully, why he didn’t simply leave you to the heartache you felt you knew how to manage. 

What a feeling.

To feel like a fool for following your God into promise because the days suddenly look like deserts now.

To lead your family there.

To trust his voice in a way you never imagined, only to feel trapped in the faith that just set you free. To still be fed, covered, led, and loved, yet, feel abandoned, idle, alone, and insecure. 

Why don’t we trust him with the moments that hurt? Why does the wandering rattle us so deeply?

Yet, I’m learning. Mainly that the circling is not pointless. What if it is precise.

What if this mountain, this heartache, this confrontation with my fears that I keep resenting is not mocking me…but refining me.

The first time I walked down a path of faith with God, I just survived it. I trusted God because I had no other option, but I was gasping the entire way through. I obeyed. I endured. I held my faith together with trembling hands. I crossed the sea and believed that would be the hardest part.

The second time I recognized the terrain. I did not panic as quickly. I began to ask questions. Why does this hurt the same? Lord, what do you want from me? I was no longer just surviving. I was beginning to understand.

The third time, I stopped outrunning it. I let the process dig. I let therapy excavate what prayer alone had not pulled up. I named the triggers I once ignored. I faced the fears I once concealed. I healed places I did not know were infected to begin with.

And now surfacing again, I can articulate it. I can tell you precisely how my fear of failure runs me ragged in trying to overcompensate for weakness. I can tell you where loneliness will speak for me if I am unwilling to engage my faith. I am aware of every ounce of heartache that I am holding and the choices I made back then that allow this ache to linger today. I can finally explain why trusting God is all somehow worth the pain. 

What once wounded me now warns me. What once crushed me now clarifies me. Excavation hurts, but it always reveals. On the first pass you think God failed you. On the second you start asking better questions. On the third you see the thread. On the fourth you can testify.

Maybe traveling around the same mountain was never about humiliation. Maybe it was about killing the remnants of Egypt that still lived in our hearts. Maybe finding ourselves encountering a familiar ache or a former fear, yet again, is not the result of our missteps or God’s failures to see us clearly. 

Maybe patience really is doing its perfect work. Maybe the loops are pruning and the delay is detox. Maybe what feels like repetition is actually refinement. Maybe what is dying in this desert is not my destiny but my dependence on outcomes I cannot control. Maybe, possibly, the pain that continues to separate me from the God who is present in every moment of my life is not proof that He has ignored my needs, but evidence that He has rarely paused the process of perfecting me for Himself.

Because He did this before.

In the wilderness, He did not just let them wander. He gave them law. They left Egypt in a night, but they still needed deliverance from themselves. Slaves needed structure. Freed people needed identity. Wanderers needed boundaries. And it is possible that when freedom comes in a moment, we start to believe healing will too. That preparedness for purpose should arrive as quickly as rescue did.

But it rarely does.

So then came commandments. Law on top of wilderness, not because He was frustrated with their wandering, but because He was forming them in it. He’s given me a few too. Boundaries that feel restrictive, convictions that feel inconvenient, discipline by design. 

These desert days.

Barren and lacking for as far as my eyes can see. Overwhelmed with guidance but underwhelmed with arrival. Dry enough to make hope feel fragile. Long enough to make delay feel personal.

And still… not empty.

Because somewhere between the dryness and the delay, I am reminded that deserts are not places where God disappears. They are places where distractions do.

There is no excess here. No noise to hide behind. No quick relief to numb what hurts. Just truth, and me, and the God I accused of being distant, standing closer than I realized the entire time.

My desperation can make fear feel tangible, close enough to sit beside me and breathe down my neck. Yet there is no evidence that God has forgotten me. What I do see is something harder to accept but far more sacred. He trusts me with transformation that cannot grow in comfort.

The promise was never only about arrival. It is about capacity. It is about refusing to let me step into answered prayers carrying the same fragility that once convinced me I would not survive the waiting.

I am learning to recognize His faithfulness in a different way. Not in the absence of pain, but in His refusal to let pain be meaningless.

He has never asked me to pretend this doesn’t hurt. He has never required polished prayers or strength that looks impressive from the outside. What He has asked for is honesty. The grief I called inconvenient. The disappointment I renamed maturity. The loneliness I quietly carried because I assumed even He would not fully understand it.

He is not offended by my ache. He is present within it, patient with the parts of me still trying to protect wounds He is already willing to hold.

And eventually, exhaustion did what striving never could. It told the truth. I could not keep trying to survive the desert while refusing to trust Him within it.

-Pastor Danielle

Note: This is usually where I leave a prayer for you, but I've ended here somewhat still unresolved with the place that I am in. Grateful but aching. Yet God is faithful, and the very next day at my home church, Witness Church Charlotte, a message titled “Unstuck” by Apostle Kevin Duhart, answered every question that remained about God’s plans for his people in this refining place.

I pray it blesses you too. https://www.youtube.com/live/DawZp8Y6iLs?si=o_7dFCNj2dyQ9mGf 

Promises to remember:

Deuteronomy 8:2–3 (KJV)“And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”

Psalm 34:18 (KJV)“The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”

Isaiah 43:2 (KJV)“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”

James 1:2–4 (KJV)“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers

temptations;Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

1 Peter 1:6–7 (KJV)“Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”

Lamentations 3:22–23 (KJV)“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”

Proverbs 3:5–6 (KJV)“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Hebrews 4:15–16 (KJV)“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”