The Hidden Curriculum of Hard Seasons

Hard Seasons

Some of the most important things forged in me during the old season weren’t on my agenda. I didn’t sign up for them. I didn’t ask for them. But God, in His wisdom, knew I needed them for what He’s prepared for me.

Joseph didn’t ask to be thrown into a pit by his brothers or sold into slavery. He didn’t request a prison cell after being falsely accused. But those years of betrayal, injustice, and isolation weren’t wasted. They forged in him the character he would need to lead Egypt through famine and reconcile with the brothers who had betrayed him. The dreams God gave him as a young man required a maturity he didn’t yet possess. The old season, painful as it was, built what the new season required.

Moses spent forty years in the wilderness tending sheep after fleeing Egypt as a fugitive. Surely those decades felt like exile, like wasted potential, like the death of a calling. But God was forging something essential in him during those years, humility, patience, intimacy with God in isolation, and the skills to lead a wandering people through a wilderness. The palace had given Moses education and position, but the desert gave him character and dependence on God. The burning bush moment only came after the refining process was complete.

David’s years fleeing from Saul felt like delay, like injustice, like God had forgotten His promise. But those years forged in David a deep dependence on God, a theology forged in caves rather than classrooms, and the leadership skills to command a diverse group of outcasts and misfits. When he finally took the throne, he wasn’t the idealistic youth Samuel had anointed. He was a man who knew God intimately because he’d had to trust Him completely when there was nowhere else to turn.

What was forged in me during my old season?

What did the fire produce that I couldn’t have gained any other way?

Perhaps it was patience, the ability to wait on God’s timing rather than force my own. Maybe it was faith, the kind that only develops when circumstances give me no natural reason for hope. It could be compassion, the empathy that comes from my own suffering, making me able to comfort others with the comfort I received from God.

Maybe it was discernment, the wisdom to recognize manipulation, false promises, or counterfeit opportunities because I’ve learned the hard way what isn’t from God. Perhaps it was humility, the understanding that without God I can do nothing, an understanding that success never teaches but failure inscribes on my soul.

It might be resilience, the ability to get back up after being knocked down, to keep going when everything in me wants to quit. Or perseverance, not just surviving difficulty but remaining faithful through it, keeping my hand to the plough even when I can’t see the end of the row.

The old season may have forged courage in me, not the absence of fear, but the willingness to move forward despite it. It may have built confidence, not in myself, but in God’s faithfulness when circumstances scream otherwise. It may have developed character, the internal substance that holds me steady when external pressures try to knock me off course.

Melissa Saulnier

BraveBeyondBreaking.com