Wilderness Feels Like Home

We learned to find joy in affliction, because we never knew anything else.

Some of us were born in wilderness places. Maybe not literally, but emotionally, spiritually. We were raised in the dry. We were shaped by the silence. We learned to navigate terrain that offered no soft landings.

Pain was a language we understood before we even knew how to name it. Disappointment came often, so we stopped expecting more. We adjusted to the ache. Not because we liked it, but because it became familiar. Predictable. Ours.

And after a while, we stopped calling it suffering and started calling it normal.

That’s the thing about living in the wilderness long enough. You forget what water feels like. You stop believing in rain. And when it finally comes, when life does give you a reprieve, a moment of beauty, a season of ease… it feels like a holiday. A brief escape. Not home.

Because home was the struggle. The waiting. The resilience built under pressure. Home was learning how to sing with a dry throat, how to keep walking when the path kept cutting you open. Home was where we met God in the dust.

So when people talk about joy, we don’t picture laughter and ease. We picture the kind of joy Paul wrote about. The joy forged through affliction, not around it. The joy that survives, not the kind that sparkles. The kind that says:

“We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”—Romans 5:3–4

That verse hits differently when you’ve lived in a wilderness your whole life.

Because perseverance isn’t just a word to us… it’s how we survived. And hope? It’s not a shiny emotion. It’s a quiet defiance. A decision to believe in beauty even when we’ve only known barren land.

So maybe you’ve never had a soft place to land. Maybe joy always feels like a borrowed coat, and peace like a place you’re only visiting. I want you to know… you’re not broken. You’re built differently. You grew up in the desert and still learned how to bloom.

That matters.

God saw you there. And He’s never wasted a single hard thing.

You don’t need to force yourself into someone else’s garden. The wilderness taught you something sacred. How to endure. How to hope with cracked lips. How to hold onto joy, not because it was given, but because you carved it out of stone.

And maybe one day, when the wilderness is behind you, you’ll look back and realize… that dry place grew something deep. And nothing can take that away from you.

Reflection Question: Has your wilderness shaped your definition of joy?

For the soul that’s weary: You’ve lived in hard places long enough to forget what softness feels like. But God is both, refiner and comforter. He sees your roots, even when no one else does.

Love,

Sarah.

Thank you for joining me here.

I know I post in bursts and at random, but your presence, your eyes on these words, means more than you know. This space has never been polished, just honest. And if my heart words have met you in some way, I’d be so grateful if you’d consider supporting this little corner of mine, whether by sharing, upgrading, or simply sticking around.

It’s just me and Jesus here, doing the best we can with the broken and the beautiful.