| Today’s letter was inspired by a reader who wrote:
“Dear Nkiruka, I know healing is happening, but some days it feels invisible. My life does not look dramatically different yet, and nobody seems to notice the progress I have made. Sometimes I wonder if I am doing something wrong or if I have been standing still all along.”
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How do you know healing is happening when there is nothing obvious to point to?
I think that many of us have asked this same question, whether we said it out loud or not.
How do you trust the process when your life still looks largely the same? When there is no dramatic testimony, no clear before-and-after story, no visible evidence that all the work you have been doing is producing anything at all?
I think one of the reasons this question feels so heavy is because we live in a world that celebrates visible progress.
People can see a promotion. They can see weight loss.
They can see a new house, a new relationship, a new opportunity.
Visible change is easy to acknowledge. Internal change is different.
How do you measure becoming less anxious than you were a year ago?
How do you quantify learning to trust again after disappointment?
How do you explain that something which once consumed your thoughts for days now occupies only a few moments?
Who notices those things besides you?
And yet, those shifts matter.
In fact, some of them matter more than the things people can see.
I remember a season after an intense period of ministry when I found myself unusually quiet. Nothing was necessarily wrong, but something in me needed recovery.
For a long time, I had associated growth with movement. If God was doing something significant in my life, surely there would be evidence. There would be momentum. There would be visible progress. There would be something I could point to and say, “Look what God is doing.”
Instead, I entered a season that felt slower than the one before it.
The pace changed. The noise reduced. The urgency disappeared.
And honestly, I struggled with that.
There was nothing impressive about that season. No major milestones. No exciting announcements. No obvious evidence that anything meaningful was happening.
Looking back now, I realize some of the deepest healing of my life was taking place during that period.
I was learning to rest without feeling guilty. Learning to sit with myself. Learning to separate my identity from my productivity. Learning that God’s love for me was not dependent on how much I was accomplishing.
None of those lessons would have made an interesting social media update.
Yet they changed me.
That season taught me that we tend to trust visible progress more than invisible progress.
Perhaps that is why healing can feel discouraging. We are waiting for fruit while God is growing roots.
Scripture says:
“He shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season.” — Psalm 1:3
What stands out to me in that verse is the phrase in its season.
Fruit has a season.
Which means there are other seasons too.
There are seasons when growth is happening beneath the surface. Seasons when strength is developing quietly. Seasons when God is doing work that cannot yet be seen.
Roots grow long before fruit appears.
Yet nobody stands over a seed every morning demanding evidence.
Nobody digs it up every week to check whether growth is happening.
We trust the process because we understand the nature of growth.
I wonder why we struggle to offer ourselves the same grace.
Why do we assume that because healing is quiet, it is absent?
Why do we conclude that because we still have difficult days, no progress has been made?
Why do we dismiss the small victories because they do not look dramatic enough?
Jesus once spoke about a farmer who scattered seed and then went about his life while growth happened beyond his sight.
“The seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” — Mark 4:27
I love that picture because it reminds me that growth does not require our constant monitoring.
Sometimes transformation is taking place even when we cannot fully see it.
I have noticed this in my own life.
Healing rarely arrived through one defining moment.
It came through small shifts.
Through realizing that I recovered more quickly from disappointment.
Through noticing that certain fears no longer controlled my decisions.
Through becoming less reactive.
Through choosing peace where I once chose worry.
Through learning to trust God in places where I previously demanded certainty.
None of those changes happened overnight.
Most of them were so gradual that I almost missed them.
And maybe that is the point.
Healing often feels slow while it is happening.
Only later do we look back and realize how far we have come.
So if you are in a season where growth feels invisible, I want to gently suggest that hidden does not mean absent.
The fact that your life does not look dramatically different today does not mean God is not at work.
The fact that nobody else can see the progress does not mean progress is not happening.
The fact that healing feels slow does not mean healing is failing.
Some of the most beautiful work God does in us happens where there is no audience.
Away from applause.
Away from recognition.
Away from the pressure to prove that something is changing.
And perhaps that is where healing becomes most honest.
Reflection Prompt:
What is one quiet victory you have experienced this week? Document it, and celebrate you. It also deserves your attention.
Praying that when God is growing roots, you will not mistake the season for stagnation.
Love,
Nkiruka |
