When God Calls It Redirection

Two doors closed, a year of healing, and the grace waiting on the other side

📖 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” — Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)

I want to tell you about two closed doors — because sometimes God doesn’t just close one to get your attention. Sometimes He closes two, in the same year, in the same season, just to make sure you heard Him the first time.

The first was my job. April 2025. A paid Administrator role I’d held with care and commitment — gone, with the quiet efficiency of a cost-cutting decision. My position was handed to a virtual administrator from the Philippines. No fanfare. No ceremony. Just a door that was no longer open to me.

I barely had time to catch my breath before the second one closed.

My church. I’d been serving voluntarily as Web Administrator — hours and weeks of work offered freely, poured out from a heart that simply wanted to contribute. Then came the news: I was being removed. Not only removed — my work was being redone. Not handed on. Not built upon. Undone, and started again from scratch, as though what I’d given hadn’t been quite good enough.

That one landed differently.

There’s a particular grief in voluntary service that the world doesn’t always validate — you weren’t paid, so perhaps the loss doesn’t count. You gave freely, so perhaps it shouldn’t sting. Yet it did. Not with bitterness at first, but with the quiet, deep ache of contribution that felt unseen, and work that felt erased. If I’m honest, the bitterness did come — quietly, the way it always does, settling into the corners of the heart like dust that accumulates unseen until one day you notice how dim the room has become.

I won’t tell you I bounced back quickly. I didn’t.

It took the whole year.

Not a dramatic year of loud grief, but the slow, unglamorous kind of healing — the kind that happens in prayer ministry sessions, one layer at a time, as the Holy Spirit gently loosens what hurt has tightened. Session by session. Prayer by prayer. The faithful, patient work of bringing the wound back to the Cross, until one day — gradually, quietly — I realised the weight had lifted. The sting was still a memory, but it no longer had its teeth in me.

That is what Healing 💔heARTs💖 looks like from the inside.

The Hebrew word in Jeremiah 29:11 for “thoughts” is machashabah — purposeful, deliberate, creative thinking. The kind of careful, intentional planning an architect makes before a single stone is laid. God wasn’t speaking vague goodwill. He was saying: I have been thinking about you specifically, purposefully, all along. Even in the year it hurt. Even in the prayer ministry room. Even when healing felt more like excavation than restoration.

That changes everything.

I’ve learned this lesson from many angles across my life. My story holds seasons of rejection that felt, at the time, like pure loss: betrayal from church leadership two decades ago that sent me walking away from Christianity entirely; four miscarriages that left silent absences in our home; thirty years of estrangement from my brother, fuelled by lies I couldn’t correct. Each closed door felt final. Each one, in time, revealed itself as something else entirely.

Not a dead end. A redirection.

My job and my church were no different — though I couldn’t see that clearly in the middle of it, and I won’t pretend I could. What looked like being set aside was actually God clearing my hands, because He needed them free. Healing 💔heARTs💖 needed more of me. The Speakers Institute training was waiting. A whole new chapter of ministry and voice was standing just beyond those closed doors, and I wouldn’t have walked through it if I’d still been administrating someone else’s systems and rebuilding someone else’s website.

There is a kintsugi quality to these seasons — that ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, so that the break itself becomes the most beautiful part of the piece. God doesn’t discard what has been cracked open by rejection. He traces the fracture line with gold and whispers: this is where the light gets in.

📖 “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” — Romans 8:28 (NKJV)

I am at peace with it now. Hard-won, prayer-soaked peace — the kind that costs something and is therefore worth something. Not because the sting never existed, but because the Holy Spirit did the slow, faithful work of healing it, one session at a time, until I could look back and see clearly what I couldn’t see then.

I was never truly set aside. I was set apart. Repositioned. Redirected toward the work only I was called to carry.

📖 “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” — 1 Corinthians 15:58 (NKJV)

Nothing given in love is ever wasted in His economy. Not one hour. Not one administrative task completed faithfully in obscurity. Not one prayer ministry session that felt like it was going nowhere. Not one year of slow, unglamorous healing. God counted every minute of it, and was already — already — weaving it into something far greater than either role could have contained.

The rejection wasn’t the final word. It never is.

It was redirection, wearing rejection’s clothes.

💡 Reflection:

• Have you ever had more than one door close in a short season, and found the healing took far longer than you expected — or thought it should? 🤔
• Is there a place where you’ve served freely and felt your contribution go unacknowledged, or even undone? What do you need to hear God say over those hours? 🤔
• Looking back at a painful season, can you see the gradual nature of God’s healing in your own life — not dramatic, but faithful, layer by layer? 🤔

🎺 Affirmation:

I am not set aside — I am set apart. My labour in love is never lost in God’s economy. My year of healing was not wasted — it was the work of a faithful Father, restoring what rejection tried to take. The doors that closed were not the end of my story — they were the turning of a page, and the light on the other side was already waiting.

🪂 Life Application:

If you’re in the middle of a slow healing — the unglamorous kind, without a dramatic turning point — take heart today. Bring it to prayer ministry if you can; there is no shame in needing help to excavate what hurt has buried. If you’re on the other side of it, as I now am, take a moment to write down what the year cost you, and what it gave you in return. Let that become your thank-offering to the God whose machashabah — whose purposeful, creative thinking — never once stopped working on your behalf, even in the hardest months.

🎨 Creative Prompt:

Paint, sketch, or collage two doors — side by side. One closed, one opening. Between them, leave a space — a threshold — and fill that threshold with whatever colour feels like peace to you today. Let the image become a prayer of trust, and a declaration that you believe God is already on the other side, calling you forward.

🙌 Closing Prayer:

Lord, You see every hour of service poured out in love — including the ones that went unacknowledged, the ones that were undone by someone else’s hands, the ones that ended without ceremony or gratitude. Today I bring You those two closed doors, and I bring You the year it took to heal from them.

You are the God who counts. You are the God who repositions. You are the God who shows up in prayer ministry sessions, again and again, gently loosening what hurt has tightened, layer by patient layer — because You were never in a hurry with my healing, only faithful to it.

Thank You that rejection in Your hands always becomes redirection. Thank You that the year of healing wasn’t wasted time — it was the threshold, and You were with me in every step of it.

Help me to trust You with every closed door still to come, knowing You are already thinking purposefully about what lies on the other side.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.