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2025 was a year of pruning, uprooting, and preparation. The Lord had called me into a wilderness season and had me surrender my idea of ministry. He searched my heart, He pruned, He severed, He deposited compassion into my spirit, and all along He was answering my scary prayers.
Between the last few days of 2024 and the beginning of January 2025, I began to feel a heaviness in my spirit. The Lord’s grace was lifting on things where His grace was flowing prior. I didn't know what was happening. On January 5th I received a prophetic word that 2025 was going to be more than a silent year, it’s a preparation year.
A series of events unfolded in the span of six weeks: The Lord told me to give Him the podcast, He separated me from the community I was sure were to be my forever tribe, He had me change the way I viewed and loved my husband David, He had me make uncomfortable phone calls, I had to accept Him taking me out of my corporate job that was my home away from home. These things were one heartbreak after the other. I had a pit in my stomach for weeks.
The days were long. I was isolated, heartbroken, and exhausted. The things and places where I thrived most, now riddled me with nervousness. Then I saw in the Spirit, me walking into a plain field and Jesus had me sit down. I was in the wilderness.
When the isolation was too much to bear, I asked Him: “Why do you have me making embarrassing phone calls and then there’s these people that just stopped talking to me without telling me why and they’re walking around this place like nothing ever happened? How are they getting away with it?!” And He said, “Nobody’s getting away with anything.” That’s when I knew I needed to trust the Lord’s hand in this even though my flesh struggled immensely. I felt such humiliation as I found a part of me yearning for answers.
But because the Lord spoke a Word, I knew it was time to be aware like never before. The recurring question throughout the year was from Isaiah 43:19;. “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” So I applied the two: He’s doing a new thing and ‘do I not see it?’
“Do I not see it…?” that replayed in my mind for months. One day I said to the Lord, "God, I don't recall taking my eyes off of you, so what has this all been about?” I found a giant piece of the puzzle, the Lord was answering prayers all this time.
Months ago I told the Lord I wanted to do ministry full-time... I had in mind the creative arts. I had in mind David and I being a traveling duo, praying for people, singing over them, collaborating locally. But God. He ripped the grace off my corporate job that kept me away from my children a majority of the day and sent me home to be with them. Full time. Shortly after resigning, we had hit rock bottom financially and we learned a different level of dependence. Then the Lord told me to give Him the podcast for the entire year of 2025 and to solely focus on laying the foundation in my home.
And then, unbeknownst to me, the scariest prayer yet. I told the Lord, “Jesus, I want to love like You…” That rolled off my tongue often. I meant it too, but the imagery in my mind was that I would meet an endless amount of people, hear really crazy stories, and have the simple privilege of sitting down with them and not passing any judgement on the things I would hear. Instead, the Lord had me intercede for people over and over again in prayer that spoke poorly about me. In the pressing, He removed ‘me’ from the story, I didn’t take their behavior towards me personally anymore. This wasn’t overnight of course. But eventually I landed at the place where I grieved for testimony. (Hebrews 12:1) I was grieved at seeing anyone, willingly or not, tainting their God given story. But because there’s more to this walk, because it’s not flesh and blood, God will tell you what to intercede for.
And of course we know the Lord isn’t tricky. He answers prayers. He prunes and severs what does not produce fruit.
Seasons like these are ultimately about refining, it’s about a bigger picture. Scripture tells us in John 15 that God cuts off what doesn’t produce fruit. There comes a point in the process where you have to recognize your role in your own suffering. You have to be able to admit you have bad habits. The Lord may remove, but He also wants to heal you & sharpen you. One of the first things to surface was a terrible trait of extremism. I took the phrase, “Don’t assume you’re the smartest person in the room” to an extreme. There was an unrecognized lingering spirit of fear & rejection, that I would naturally approach people with a pedestal to place them on. Sabotage was in this mix too. I realized later that certain conversations that I would prompt, would drain people. I thought & processed out loud and that’s annoying :) When I was shown this, I repented and prayed for this to be removed along with everything that was attached to it.
I didn’t give myself a chance. Another thing that I didn’t have the wisdom of, is that people are given different graces of equipment [in the five fold ministry]. For example, someone who is graced in teaching might not be so excited about prophecy. Or someone who is evangelistic would go crazy to sit at a desk in an office for eight hours a day. Or someone that ‘constantly’ has a prophetic word, may drain someone who is more on the pastoral end. You may be able to sense that waters are about to shake in a place, but if you tell this to a person who is currently thriving, what you’re telling them might jack them up in their walk. I genuinely did not know, even after all of these years of walking with the Lord that just because someone is a believer, that does not mean they’re going to comprehend or be excited about what you’ve got to share. I didn’t have the knowledge nor the wisdom for this, but after this was brought to my attention I learned to simply shut up.
Going back to that day I said to the Lord, "God I don't recall taking my eyes off of you." Some days later it was shown to me that in the early hours when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water in a raging storm, they were on a boat that JESUS SENT THEM ON.
This year the Lord answered a prayer that I later found out was one of the scariest ones I could pray. It was a month before 2025 was to end, just like the disciples nearly 3/4 of the way to their destination, when I realized I was living in what I asked for. “Jesus I want to love like you.”
The Wilderness is one of the most intimate invitations you could ever receive from God. His refining is true. There comes a new boldness, a new strength. A deeper desire for Heaven. An ultra sensitivity to His Holy Spirit. An intolerance for the opposite approach. A crushing and a pressing that produces fine oil. Conversations that produce fruit. Friendships that sharpened and hold accountability and point to the Cross.
He whispered and orchestrated new things. He was at work much sooner than I perceived.
The wilderness finally made sense.