From the Pit to the Palace

There’s a quiet feeling of shame that doesn’t shout but it lingers. It sits in the corners of your thoughts and tries to convince you that what you’ve been through, you should be embarrassed about it.

Moments you wished you could erase.

I understand that feeling more than most. There are moments when I look back at certain seasons of my life and wonder why I had to walk through them… why those lessons came the way they did… why it had to cost so much.

But when you step back and really look at it not just at your life, but at people who have come before you you start to see something different.

The pit was never the end of the story.

Think about Joseph betrayed by his own brothers, thrown into a pit, sold, falsely accused, imprisoned. Everything about his journey looked like loss, like abandonment, like delay. But every place that felt like it was breaking him was actually positioning him. The pit wasn’t where his story ended it was where life started shifting.

David was anointed king long before he ever saw a throne. He went from shepherd to hiding in caves, running for his life, misunderstood and hunted. There were moments where it probably felt like the promise didn’t match the reality. But the wilderness shaped him into someone who could carry what was waiting for him.

Daniel was thrown into a den of lions. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were placed in a fire that should have consumed them. Samson lost his strength, his vision, and his direction before he ever fulfilled his final purpose. And even Jesus betrayed, abandoned, humiliated walked through isolation before resurrection.

None of them walked a straight path to purpose. Every one of them had a “pit” season. A place where things didn’t make sense. A place where they were stripped of comfort, identity, and control.

And the hard part to accept but necessary to understand:

The pit not only exposes you, but it also prepares you.

It shows you what’s real. It forces you to face parts of yourself you would’ve ignored. It teaches you what strength actually looks like not the version that performs for people, but the kind that holds on when no one is watching.

So the shame you feel? It’s misplaced.

Because those moments you want to hide are the things that built you into who you are becoming.

You didn’t just survive those seasons you learned in them. You grew in them. You became more aware, more grounded, more capable of carrying something deeper than surface level success. That’s not something to be ashamed of. That’s something most people avoid their entire lives.

The palace the place of peace, purpose, restoration it doesn’t come to people who have never been through anything. It comes to those who have been shaped by what they went through and didn’t let it define them in the wrong way.

Your story isn’t “I went through too much.”

Your story is “I went through it… and I’m still here.”

And not just here but changing, learning, becoming.

There is a version of you that exists on the other side of all of this that isn’t weighed down by shame, but grounded in understanding. Someone who doesn’t hide their past, but uses it with intention. Someone who knows that the pit didn’t disqualify them it revealed them.

It’s ok to say, “I didn’t like that season.”

”I wouldn’t choose it again.”

But I’m not going to carry it like a stain on who I am!

Because it’s not a stain it’s a chapter.

And chapters aren’t meant to be lived in. They’re meant to be read, understood, and turned

You’re not stuck in the pit.

You’re being prepared for the palace.