Dry Seasons Can Be Moments Of Correction
For SEELE, September is a month focused on the dry and wilderness seasons of life, moments we can all relate to
“But he knows where I am going. And when he tests me, I will come out as pure as gold. ”
A dry season is a time when God feels distant, yet it is a time of preparation, extreme humility, dependence on God, and deep spiritual testing. No one likes dry seasons or wilderness seasons, especially if you have been going through the season for years. A couple of weeks I can take, maybe even a few months, but when it comes to years, I’d rather say: no thanks, I’ll pass.
At the end of 2024, when I chose monthly themes for SEELE, I didn’t realize how timely and orderly making September’s theme to be: navigating dry seasons. In the Hebrew calendar, lies the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah, which is a time for introspection, self-improvement, and repentance. If you want to find out more, take a look at Megann Marcellino’s teaching on Rosh Hashanah. Dry seasons are times for introspection, self-improvement, and repentance.
But, we don’t get to pick our dry seasons or our testing seasons. I have come to find as a born-again-believer of 13 years (my, it feels like 20 or 30 years!) that dry seasons are gifts in disguise. It’s easier to say this, and even as I write this, I am going through a 6-year wilderness season. But, I have been through dry season before, maybe you have too, and when you have been through something before, it helps you navigate it the next time round.
Now, I have adjusted to my dry season. There is nothing I can do further to come out it. It’s one of those seasons that God is firmly in control of, and is also a waiting season. But, I have come to realize that sometimes, in my dry seasons, there might be something that God is wanting me to correct, repent from, change, because if I don’t it’s going to keep repeating and He can’t bring the increase until I learn to correct something.
God has been parenting for thousands of years. He knows what he’s doing in and with people’s lives, for the believer and the non-believer. But, with the believer, He can do more because we give Him access to guide our lives.
In our dry seasons we’re often exasperated, ready to give up on life, sometimes mad at God, mad at others, and raging on the inside, especially if the season has turned into years. In these moments, I find in my own life, God is just as calm and also firmly saying: “if you would quiet yourself, there is something I’m saying. I need you to correct something. There is something on the inside of you that has been there for years, a wound that makes you act a certain way, and it’s causing destruction. I can’t take you further and unleash favor on your life until you correct this, because if I give you breakthrough now, in a matter of time, you’re going to wreck the blessing and that won’t be good for either of us. Humble yourself before me and let me talk to you, heal you, and bring new behaviors and ways of thinking.”
When there is something God wants to correct in our lives, He’ll tell us. We just need to be still, ask Him what He wants to do in our lives, and let Him do what needs to be done.
Most recently, in my dry and waiting season I was triggered by something someone did and it threw my whole summer out of whack. Like totally put me out of commission for weeks. I had reached a breaking point that I did not care to bounce back from, nor think I could bounce back from. I literally screamed in my pillow to God: “why did you create me, only to suffer?” God doesn’t engage in screaming matches. It was when I humbled myself before Him that He could show me areas of cyclical things that kept repeating, and that needed to be corrected. I needed to enact new behaviors in my life.
In my 37 years of life, I never realized this area in my life had a hole in it, and I believe it’s an area that God needed me to make a change in, that’s closely tied to the breakthrough I’ve so desperately been needing.
So, I write all this to say, in our dry, wilderness, and waiting seasons, God is doing all sorts of things. He has His reasons of why these seasons happen but when we come out of them, we shall come forth as gold. Part of these dreaded seasons are for us to correct any sort of behaviors that God wants to amend in us, destructive behaviors that might be harmful to the breakthrough He will bring at His appointed time.
This week, KB and I had a conversation on navigating wilderness seasons. Take a listen!
