Egypt Seasons

A personal reflection of living a life guided by I AM.

When I graduated from college, I had crafted the perfect roadmap to achieve the life of my dreams. Most of us do.

Mine had all the right stops on it: career, love, home, adventure, a life that looked the way I believed a good life was supposed to look. I wasn’t arrogant about it. I was just... optimistic. Twenty-something and certain that if I worked hard enough and wanted it badly enough, life would cooperate.

What I didn’t account for (and at that time was far from attuned to) was the possibility of God having a completely different set of directions.

The interesting thing I’ve learned about roadmaps is that the ones we draw for ourselves are almost always based on what we can see, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve been told to want, and what fear tells us we need to secure. They feel logical. They feel safe. And for stretches of time, they can even feel like they’re working.

Until they don’t.

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I want to tell you one of my Egypt stories.

In the Bible, God instructed the Israelites to observe the Festival of Tabernacles, a sacred practice of returning, in remembrance, to the conditions of their bondage in Egypt. Not to celebrate the suffering. Not to live there again. But to remember what God did to bring them out, what He provided in the wilderness, and who He proved Himself to be when they had nothing and no one else to turn to. Egypt was the place of their bondage. It was also the place where their testimony began.

We all have an Egypt. Sometimes it is a place. Sometimes it is a season. Sometimes it is a choice we made and held onto far longer than we should have. And sometimes, like mine, it is a person.

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I met him on a night out with my girlfriends. He approached me with a line that was equal parts bold and charming, clever enough to make me laugh, and I am a sucker for a man who can make me laugh. He was not my type, at least not by the standards on the checklist I had created for love in my twenties. But something about him caused me to stop when he stepped up alongside me. My girls saw it too, and one of them was sending me every nonverbal signal she had: give him your number. So I did.

What followed was one of the most romantic seasons of my life. He lived in another state, but that didn’t stop him. We would talk on the phone for hours at a time, and the conversation never got old. He was witty and warm and genuinely kind in a way that felt different from the dating experiences I’d had before. Once, after he returned home from a visit, a bouquet of white long stem roses arrived at my job the next day. Cards and handwritten letters would show up in my mailbox with poetry he wrote himself. The man was good.

So even though something in me kept whispering that the pieces didn’t quite fit, I quieted it. I adjusted my vision to make room for him. He eventually moved to my city. We began building a life together. And I told myself that this was it, that me and my roadmap were right on track.

And then things started to shift.

It was subtle at first. Doors that used to be open were now closed for phone calls. Numbers I didn’t recognize would call at strange hours, and when I answered, the line would go dead. His stories about where he’d been started creating gaps that couldn’t be explained. I felt something, that quiet, uncomfortable knowing that most women understand but none of us want to believe. I pushed it down. I loved him (well I definitely loved the idea of him). I had integrated him into my roadmap and we couldn’t get off track.

Until one day, I answered one of those unknown calls and there was a woman’s voice on the other end. And just like that, what I had known in my spirit was confirmed.

He was cheating.

I asked him to leave. He did. We agreed to end it. And then, a month or two later, I took him back. Not because I had forgiven him. I hadn’t. Not because I trusted him. I didn’t. I went back, and I can say this now with full honesty, because I wanted to punish him. I wanted to prove to her that she couldn’t take something I hadn’t chosen to release. That’s not love. That’s not even close to love. That was pride wrapped in pain, dressed up as a relationship.

So there we were: two people who had lost the plot entirely, hurting each other in circles, in a season that God was trying to close and we kept trying to force to stay open.

Then came the news that broke everything wide open. She was pregnant.

What followed was a kind of chaos I don’t have enough words for. There was devastation. There was anger. There were moments where we’d be done and then somehow not done, because pain and history and pride and confusion have a way of keeping you in rooms you should have left long ago. I’m not proud of that season. But I am grateful for what God was doing in it, even when I was completely unable to see His hand.

Eventually, I got quiet. I put distance between us. I stopped performing the revenge. And in that quiet, something in me began to clear. My original vision, the one God had placed in me, started to resurface.

About six months later, on a cold, rainy evening, my doorbell rang. I opened the door and there he stood, soaking wet, out of breath, like he’d walked through the storm to get there. He stepped into my foyer and before I could say a word, he dropped to one knee and pulled out a ring.

I stood there and I felt... nothing. Not the anger I’d carried for years. Not the desire that had confused me for so long. Not grief, not hope, not warmth. Nothing.

And in that nothing, God spoke.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. But with the kind of clarity that only comes when you’ve finally gotten still enough to hear Him. He reminded me that He had been there the entire time. Through every cycle, every mistake, every dark room I refused to leave. He had never left. And He was telling me now that I could trust Him with the dream I had been trying to protect on my own. That I could release this version of the story, and He would align me with the real one. His version. The one He had authored.

I said no to that proposal. I cried while I said it, because there was real grief there: grief for the end of the time we’d spent cultivating some good memories, for the pain of the bad ones, for the ways I had contributed to the mess of that season just as much as he had. But in that no, I said yes to so much more. For both of us. I gave him the freedom to find his real path, and I finally stepped onto mine.

That is how God works. He will use the whole story, even the parts we’re ashamed of, to redirect us toward purpose.

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I share this not to relitigate old pain, but because this is what the Festival of Tabernacles taught me about my own personal Egypt experience.

If I had not gone through that season, I would not have drawn closer to God in the way I did. I would not have understood the cost of forcing pieces into my story that were never meant to stay. And had I kept forcing it, had I said yes to that ring and married a man not intended for me, I would have extended my own season in darkness far longer than necessary. Pain, when we let God use it, becomes the very thing that recalibrates us back to purpose.

Here’s what that season taught me about the God who is I AM: He is whatever you need, exactly when you need it. Not a moment early, not a moment late. When I needed a way out, He was the door. When I needed clarity, He was the light. When I needed to hear the truth, He spoke it into my silence. I AM is not just a title. It is a promise. God is complete. And He is present in every season, including the ones we created for ourselves through our own disobedience.

My mistakes did not cancel my dream. My pain did not disqualify my purpose. The dream was always there, being protected by the One who placed it in me. I just needed to stop relying on self, in my limited visibility, to navigate a road ahead only God could fully see.

And look at how God works. I did eventually get the love I had envisioned. The man God had for me checked every box I had ever written down and exceedingly abundantly above that. Kind. Thoughtful. Genuine. Committed. And yes, fine. (God has a sense of humor and He is also very thorough. You did your thing, Lord, and I Thank You!) My husband is nothing short of a gift from a God who never forgot what He planted in me via the dream He gave me.

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God is not reactive. The God who is I AM exists outside of time, knowing the end from the beginning. He is not surprised by the pivots that will be necessary in your life. He is not scrambling to catch up to your situation. He authored every piece of it.

What feels like a detour to you is His way of navigating you off the wrong road and onto the right one.

It is okay to have a dream. It is okay to have a vision for your life. But building a roadmap without God guiding your hand is a sure way to find yourself scrambling in the dark longer than necessary, trying to force pieces to fit that were never meant to be permanent parts of your story.

A life led by Jesus doesn’t mean you stop planning. It means you hold your plans loosely enough that He can actually move you through them.

The more you practice that kind of surrender, the faster you learn to recognize His voice when it is time to adjust course.

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I don’t know what your Egypt is. Maybe it’s a job you’ve outgrown but can’t bring yourself to leave. Maybe it’s a relationship you know is out of alignment but feels too familiar to release. Maybe it’s a roadmap to your dreams you’ve been navigating in your limited visibility, not allowing God to guide you with His unlimited ability.

Wherever you are, God is there too. Egypt is not the ending, it is your evidence. Evidence of who God is and will be in your darkest seasons, and proof of what He will do when you trust Him enough to let go of the roadmap you created to follow the One who knows every detail about the road ahead.

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“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

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Thank you for reading,

Zia