The pastor said something this week that I cannot stop turning over in my hands.
He said: it is not difficult for men to help somebody, but they need to believe in you first.
He said there are natural things we can do, we can deliver excellent work, we can be qualified, we can be diligent, we can be visible and in a vacuum, those things would be enough. In a clean, neutral space, talent would speak and doors would open. But we do not work in a vacuum. We work among human beings. And human beings carry things: favourites, biases, histories, comfort zones, the people they were already going to choose before you walked into the room.
Sometimes you can work twice as hard as the next person and still not see anyone believe in your ability, not because the ability isn’t there, but because the believing has a spiritual element to it.
And then he said: pray about it. Because there is a spiritual dimension to favour that no amount of striving can manufacture.
That sentence undid me, because it named something I have lived with for years and never had language for.
I thought about Daniel: a foreigner, a captive, a young man in a court that had no obligation to see him. And yet the king identified his gift. The king elevated him. There was something on Daniel that interpreted itself to power, and power bowed to it.
I thought about Joseph: sold by his brothers, wrongly accused, forgotten in a prison cell. And yet, even in prison, the keeper of the prison saw something in him and put everything under his hand. And later, when he stood before Pharaoh, Pharaoh did not just hear him out, Pharaoh handed him the kingdom. That is not networking. That is not a referral. That is the supernatural element of favour landing on a man.
I have seen the opposite of this in my own life, and that is the honest part I want to bring to God tonight.
I have done excellent work. I have delivered projects that people spoke well of. I have had the kind of moments where you think, finally, the room sees me. And then two weeks later, the room has forgotten. And I am back at the bottom of the hill, proving myself again. And again. And again.
It feels like working against a wall.
Not a wall I can see. Not a wall made of incompetence or laziness or lack of credentials, I have the credentials, I have done the work. A wall made of something else. Something that lets the moment of recognition come and then quietly closes the door behind it. Something that means the same person who praised me on Friday will not remember to recommend me on Monday. Something that has followed me from environment to environment, which is how I know it is not the environment.
I am willing to look at myself in this. I know there may be things in how I carry myself, how I speak, how I come across, that quietly tell people do not help me, she has it handled. I want the Lord to show me those things and dismantle them. I am not exempt from being part of my own pattern.
But I also know in the deepest place I know anything, that this is bigger than my behaviour. There is a spiritual element to this wall. And only a spiritual answer will move it.
So I pray
Father in heaven,
I come to You tonight not performing, not polished, just honest.
You know the wall I am describing. You have seen it from the inside of every room I have walked into. You have watched me deliver, and watched the recognition fade, and watched me start over, and watched me start over, and watched me start over again. You know the cost of it in my body. You know the cost of it in my faith.
Lord, I am asking for the supernatural element of favour to come on my life.
Not just career favour. Friendship favour. Sisterhood favour. Covenant favour. The kind of favour that made a king look at a foreign captive and see a leader. The kind of favour that made a prison keeper trust a wrongly accused man with everything he owned. The kind of favour that does not depend on me explaining myself, justifying myself, or proving myself for the hundredth time.
Cause men to believe in me, Lord. Cause women to believe in me. Cause friends to believe in me.
Send me helpers. Send me people who do not need to be convinced. Send me people on whom You have already whispered my name before I walk into the room. Send me the ones who will champion me when I am not there to champion myself. Send me the ones who will remember on Monday what they saw on Friday.
And Father, where there is something in me, in how I speak, in how I carry myself, in how I receive or refuse help, that has been signalling to people do not bother, she does not need you, I am asking You to show me. Gently. Honestly. And to remove it. I do not want to protect a pattern that has been costing me my portion. Give me wisdom to see myself, and humility to change.
Remove every blocker that has made me unbelievable to the people You have assigned to help me. Remove the assignments that were never from You. Disrupt the spiritual ceiling that has been letting recognition in and pushing it back out two weeks later. Tear down the wall I have been working against. And on the other side of that wall, let me find the helpers, the rooms, the relationships, the husband, the friendships, the assignments You have already prepared for me.
Lord, I know what this looks like from the outside. I am 47. The world has its own arithmetic about what a woman my age can still expect from her career, from her relationships, from her future. But tonight I am refusing the world’s arithmetic and reaching for Yours. You are the God who turns things around late. You are the God of the eleventh hour. You are the God who restored the years the locusts ate. I am not too late for what You have for me.
This weekend, one verse kept rising in my spirit, and I want to stand on it tonight:
“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” Psalm 37:25
So Lord, on the authority of Your word:
I am not forsaken.
I am not overlooked.
I am not begging for bread.
I am not begging for friendship.
I am not begging to be believed in.
I have been made righteous, not by my striving, not by my résumé, not by my track record, but by the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And the righteous are not abandoned. The righteous are seen. The righteous are sent helpers. The righteous walk in favour that men did not give and men cannot take away.
So I am standing here tonight as a daughter of the Most High God, asking for what is mine.
Send the helpers. Send them in the workplace. Send them in friendship. Send them in covenant. Send them in ministry. Send them ahead of me into rooms I have not yet walked into. Let them already believe in me before I arrive.
I receive it in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Wells of Wonder 