4 -The Second Desert
I moved to Manhattan, Kansas in 2018 to serve as a missionary. The first year was everything I had hoped for. I felt alive — full of joy, energy, and a deep sense of purpose. I was discipling others, teaching about spiritual growth, and building relationships that felt genuine and meaningful.
In many ways, I was living the dream I had carried since I was 27, the same dream that had once taken me to Brazil. This time it was unfolding in the United States, but it still felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be. I loved the work. I loved the people. I was all in.
But gradually, things began to change.
It was not sudden. There was no dramatic collapse. Just a slow unraveling, the kind you do not notice until one day you are lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering where the joy went.
By 2021, I hit a wall. Not the kind you push through with motivation and coffee, but something deeper — a full-body, soul-level shutdown. I was still doing the right things: praying, showing up, leading. But inside, I felt stuck. I could not access the connection I once knew. I was not flourishing. I was only getting by.
I started asking God, “What is happening? I am seeking You. Why do I feel so far away?”
That was when something unexpected surfaced.
A traumatic childhood memory came to light — something my mind had buried in order to cope. I had no conscious access to it, but once it emerged, so much began to make sense: the heaviness I could not explain, the undercurrents of fear, the resistance I felt in places that once brought life. My body had been carrying the truth long before my mind could name it.
That moment opened something in me. Suddenly, I was not just tired — I was overwhelmed. I was diagnosed with depression and burnout again. But this time, it was more than ministry fatigue. It was trauma, spiritual confusion, and emotional overload that had been building for years.
That was also when I learned that I am a Highly Sensitive Person.
It helped clarify so much: why I notice the smallest emotional shifts in a room, why certain environments deplete me, why I absorb more than I can always hold. Bright lights, loud sounds, emotional tension — everything arrives amplified for me. My nervous system processes the world at a deeper level.
That sensitivity is not a defect. It is something in me that needs care and protection, not suppression.
No wonder I needed quiet spaces, naps, soft blankets, heating pads, chamomile tea, and long stretches of solitude to feel grounded again. My nervous system had been living in overdrive for years.
This was my second desert. But unlike the first one, I was not walking through it alone.
This time, I had therapy. I had spiritual direction. I had a few safe people who were not afraid of my questions or my unraveling. I had a sabbatical. Most importantly, I had a deeper relationship with God — not only from what I had been taught, but from what I had experienced for myself.
So I stepped away from leadership. I stopped trying to manage everything. I gave myself permission to rest. I took naps without guilt. I spent afternoons crocheting. I watched shows that made me laugh and let myself be still.
And for once, I did not feel like I had to earn the rest I was receiving.
What surprised me most was that I did not feel guilty. I was too tired to perform. And that exhaustion, strangely enough, became a doorway. It compelled me to stop striving and start trusting. I remember thinking, “If I am doing something wrong, I trust Jesus will tell me.”
He did not come with correction. He came with presence.
That season of rest did not just soothe my body. It began to reshape the way I understood God. I no longer saw Him as someone waiting for me to get it right. I saw Him as someone willing to sit with me while I could not. The Holy Spirit was not measuring my output. He was steadying my soul.
I also began to notice what I had not fully admitted before.
I longed deeply for belonging. I discovered how much safety in relationships mattered to me. I learned that having my own home — even a simple, cozy rental — felt sacred. It gave me room to breathe. It gave me a place to be.
And I came to see my sensitivity not as something to overcome, but as something to honor.
There was another truth I had to face as well: I had been performing more than I realized.
Not in a theatrical or insincere way — but in a quiet, internal pattern of becoming what others needed me to be. I had shaped myself around other people’s expectations, believing that this was love, that this was faithfulness. But underneath it was fear.
I was afraid that if I was not needed, I would be forgotten. That if I did not show up, no one would reach out. So I made myself useful. Indispensable. Available.
Not to manipulate. To survive.
And slowly, I began to untangle the truth: needing to be needed is not the same as being loved. That belief had run deep, and it had shaped the way I related to everyone — including God.
If all of this had surfaced years earlier, back during my first desert or even in my house church years, I would not have been ready for it. My theology was still rigid. My sense of self was still tied to performance. And my understanding of God, though healing, was still being revised.
But Jesus never rushed me.
He knew what I could carry, and when. He knew how to walk with me slowly, gently, and faithfully. His presence was not conditional. His kindness was not performative. He did not look at my exhaustion with disappointment — He met it with compassion.
That is the Jesus I have come to know.
And no, I am not describing a soft or watered-down version of Jesus. I am describing the real one — the one who sees beneath the behavior to the story underneath it. The one who understands what shaped us. The one who brings truth, but always with mercy. Who convicts without condemning. Who calls us out of hiding, not with fear, but with love.
This is what saved me.
And it is what continues to shape me today.
To Be Continued
Next: A seed was planted… and the calling I thought I had lost began to stir again.
