This week: We're talking about the seasons where God feels distant, life feels stalled, and everyone around you seems to be moving forward while you're still waiting on an answer. Genesis 32 tells the story of Jacob wrestling all night with God and walking away limping — but blessed. This is for anyone in a wrestling season of their own.
Some nights I wrestle with God and lose on purpose, just to see if He'll still show up the next morning. He does. I just don't always like what He has to say.
Here's the truth: some days I feel like I'm being punished for following something I don't even fully understand yet. I watch people get married, have kids, land the dream job, buy the house — and meanwhile I'm out here waiting on a DoorDash order like it's a prophetic word, timing my exit down to the minute so the dasher doesn't see me creeping to the door in yesterday's clothes.
(Yes, that's a real category of anxiety. No, I will not be elaborating further. Yes, you've done it too.)
But under the humor, there's something heavier. There are days I cry out for understanding and wisdom. Days I've screamed "why me?" into a silence that didn't answer back — not that day, anyway. I've wrestled with jealousy. Anger. Loneliness. Impatience that makes you want to just tap out of the whole waiting process. And somehow, underneath all of it, still a strange, stubborn peace I can't fully explain.
That tension isn't new. It's Genesis 32.
And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. (Genesis 32:24, KJV)
Alone. Not in a crowd, not in a support group, not even with an answer in hand — just alone, in the dark, wrestling something he couldn't fully see. Sound familiar?
And when the match was over:
And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. (Genesis 32:28, KJV)
Jacob didn't walk away from that night with a clear explanation. He walked away with a limp.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. (Genesis 32:30-31, KJV)
Blessed and limping. Not one or the other. The sun rose on him same as anybody else that morning — he just walked into it differently than he walked into the fight.
I don't know exactly where this journey is taking me yet. I'm still working my way back, still in the dark part of the wrestling match some days. But maybe you're in your own version of this — your own isolation, your own "why me," your own DoorDash-hiding, blinds-cracked-open kind of season.
So here's what I'll leave you with: don't tap out right before your breakthrough. I know that's the sermon-y thing everybody says. But Jacob didn't get the blessing by giving up at hour eleven — he got it by staying in it until the sun came up, even limping.
I can't fully put this season into words. I tried. This is as close as I could get. If you're in it too — you're not alone in the isolation, even when it feels like it.
