Hot and dry. A thick orangey-red haze coated the landscape as I stepped out of the Lilongwe International Airport. I pushed the heavy cart loaded with maybe three or four suitcases and a large trunk wrapped with luggage straps to keep them from busting open. Brooklyn and Jackson, my siblings, pushed their own carts piled high with luggage as well. With one arm, we all struggled to push the heavy carts through the small airport, while using the other arm to hold the top suitcase in order to keep them from falling. Our mom followed close by, holding Jasper, our youngest brother, by the hand, who was clutching his favorite stuffed bunny and lion. Our dad led the way pushing another cart as we crossed through the doors and into the late afternoon heat.

Up until that moment, never in the sixteen years of my life, had I spent more than five hours on a plane, and I had just finished the longest trip of my life: 30 hours later, from the cushy, clean, and green suburbs of Portland, Oregon, arriving in Lilongwe, Malawi, Africa which was not cushy, clean, or green.

“Takulandirani!” an old man smiled, his wide grin revealing missing teeth.

“Muli bwanji!” a couple of African mamas said, walking past with their babies strapped to their backs with colorful fabrics called kitenges.

People were everywhere, walking in and out of the airport, waiting for the bus, leaning on the sides of their taxis. I looked past the sea of people to see our missionary team. “Welcome to Malawi!” they cheered.

I felt so excited. Finally, we are here! But almost immediately, I felt overstimulated. My ears were filled with words that I never heard of before, the sounds of airplanes taking off, laughter, and motorcycles called tuk tuks tooting their horns. My nose was overwhelmed with the many interesting smells like smoke from the fires that burned the maize fields and body odor. Lots of body odor. People everywhere, some yelling, asking if we needed a taxi, others chatting while waiting for the bus, and then our missionary team waving and smiling and welcoming us to our new home.

After we said our hellos and gave hugs to the welcoming group, we packed all of our luggage into the dirty Toyota Fortuners and headed off to the missionary compound where we would be living for the next few years.

I looked out the dusty window and saw the orange sun begin to set over the Malawian landscape. A herd of skinny goats pranced along the side of the road. Small, stick-like trees sat still in the middle of the maize fields. Long trails of white smoke danced up into the sky. As we travelled down the bumpy red dirt road, the driver swerved to the left and right to avoid potholes and people and asked us how the trip went. I couldn’t believe that we were finally here.

We were “home.”

As much as I would like to share how idyllic, wonderful, and adventurous life was after that day we arrived in sunny, hot Malawi, it unfortunately was not.

From the first night onward, this city girl had no idea what she had gotten herself into. I had heard of culture shock but thought of it as a myth. There’s no way I will deal with culture shock like some people. Maybe it’s because they’re weak? Those were my honest thoughts.

I was wrong.

I lived in perpetual culture shock, whenever I opened my eyes in the morning, to when I closed them to go to sleep. Everywhere I looked and went, there was something new to learn and understand. It felt like I had to learn how to live all over again.

Over the next few weeks, our team members would tell us, “Don’t drink the tap water! The power goes out all the time! We will run out of water! Watch out for the mosquitoes! Lock your doors!” I know they were trying to be helpful, but honestly, it was far from helpful. My already overwhelmed brain was trying to understand all of this new and unfamiliar information.

As I dealt with the shock of being in a third-world country, I started to feel the overwhelming realization that I was living there, and that this was my new reality. I missed my grandparents and my friends. I missed my house and my room. I missed my church and my school. I even missed the little things like brushing my teeth with the sink water, and when the leaves change colors in the fall.

I wanted to go back home to America.

Each day, I started to feel like God was farther and farther away. I wondered where God was. Each night before I would fall asleep, I would think to myself, “Why would God allow this to happen? Why would He take away every single thing I loved so much? Why did my family have to go?” I did not get an answer.

I believed the fact that my family and I were “stuck” in Malawi. I did not have a good attitude about my new life in Africa. Life seemed to be getting harder and harder and my friends and family stateside began to grow farther and farther away. Going to school in Malawi was a horrible experience, and I started to feel so alone. The days turned into months and suddenly the start of a new year began and I was the loneliest I have ever been.

Whispers of a thing called “the coronavirus” started to circulate, and I will never forget the day that the Malawian government shut down the schools. When the government told the country to quarantine, we began a new routine of waking up early, doing school online, and then finding things to do on the compound since we couldn’t leave. As the weeks went by, we heard news via Instagram and Facebook and from concerned family members about how serious the COVID pandemic was getting.

The U.S. Embassy contacted the American expats living in the city to inform about a flight leaving Malawi and going back to the States before the government shut down the airport. Deep down I prayed that my family would leave. I would rather sit in an uncomfortable seat for 12 hours in economy than stay in Malawi.

My wonderful, prayerful parents wanted to leave, too. But to this day, they will say that they did not feel released from God to leave. Soon before the flight’s departure date, my parents sat me and my siblings down after dinner and said: “We have been praying about what to do next, and we feel like we need to stay in Malawi.”

I felt like I was punched in the gut.

What do you mean “stay in Malawi?” All by ourselves? The rest of the team is leaving! What will we do now? I was so disappointed. I did not understand why we had to stay in Malawi when it seemed like this was our ticket out of Malawi for good. Our time in Malawi had been difficult for each one of us, and it was not what we expected. Again, I wondered where God was in all of this. Little did I know that staying would actually be the best thing to ever happen to me and my family.

One by one, the families on our compound left Malawi and went back to the U.S. while my family stayed confined in the red brick walls of our compound. At first, I was mad. Then I felt relieved. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe there is a reason for all of this. Soon, it was just my little family alone on the compound.

My family had always been a close family, at least closer than most of my friends’. We had family dinners and had movie nights on Fridays and had little traditions throughout the year. But when COVID came to Malawi, everything changed. It forced my family and me to spend lots and lots of time together: watching Lost and Alias, baking from-scratch chocolate cakes, and even celebrating Christmas in July (because it got “cold”). We had so much time to be with each other which we now reflect on as the best time in our lives and laugh at all of the memories we made together.

In the midst of wondering where God was, and whether He abandoned me or not, I decided to turn to Jesus during what was the hardest season of my life. In my room during quarantine, after months and months of asking God why and where He was, I realized that God never left me. He never left my family. Even through difficulty, frustration, and pain, that is where I found Jesus. At 16 years old in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic, in Malawi, I re-dedicated my life to Jesus. It took moving across the ocean to a foreign land (that I honestly did not know existed) for me to start my own relationship with Him.

When I first got to Malawi, I wondered where God was and what He was doing. Now, years after that first day stepping out of that small airport, I know that God was with me the whole time. I do not know exactly why God sent my family to Malawi specifically. But I believe that it was to change me, draw me closer to Him, and draw me closer to my family. Moving there at 16 years old, prepared me for living a life with God. What I have learned is this: Wherever you are going, wherever God has placed you, He has a purpose and plan. He will use the good, the bad, and the painful to bring us closer to Him and for His glory.

When God starts chopping away at the branches of my life, I can’t say that I am full of joyful surrender. I typically resist the spiritual machete that starts swinging in my direction. I don’t want it. “God, you can keep your machete to yourself. I’ll happily live with overgrown branches and dead limbs.” But the reality is that life in the Spirit – life in sync with Christ – requires a life surrendered to the pruning seasons.

There is a natural ebb and flow to the life of a Christ-follower: Pruning and Fruit-bearing.

When there are too many dead branches or the limbs are hanging low, they will no longer produce fruit, or, the fruit will not be as sweet. A good farmer knows about pruning.

We had rose bushes galore in our garden in Malawi. They were absolutely breathtaking. The family that lived in the house before us had planted this rose garden. As I poured my morning cup of coffee, I would look out of the kitchen window and gaze on the rich and colorful roses…

…Until the fully blossomed roses dried up and fell to the ground…one petal at time. Eventually, as the weeks progressed, the thorny branches of the rose bushes started growing in all kinds of directions. And they rarely produced any roses.

I’m not a gardener. I, honestly, have no idea how to keep any type of plant alive. As was confirmed in the case of our roses, I was clueless to the fact that the branches needed to be pruned in order for the roses to come back to life. I thought “the bigger the better”, but apparently that is not true…not true at all.

Our day guard came to me one day and asked me if I would mind if he cut the branches down. Kindly, he explained that the reason the roses were not blooming was because they needed to be pruned. No fruit could be produced until pruning had taken place. I gave him the go ahead to do whatever needed to be done to bring the roses back to life. After cutting them back, to what looked like baby bushes, and after some rain and cultivating of the soil, the rose bushes blossomed in full once again.

Pruning is a gift in the wilderness season of transition.

The empty nothingness of the in-between is often the perfect time for God to get into our lives and start pruning out the old and dead branches. This pruning is deep and, often, painful work.

“I feel like I got shot out of a cannon and straight into a plate glass window. I’m still pulling out shards of glass. I’m not sure how long it is going to take to heal.”

Joel shared this with me during one of our weekly breakfast dates. Still reeling from the pain and hurt he experienced in Malawi, it seemed like the process of healing was taking its sweet time. God wasn’t/isn’t done with the pruning.

When we are looking out upon the wilderness of transition it is not merely a vast nothingness that doesn’t make sense, but it is purposeful in the shedding of the old identity and claiming the new one. Part of the shedding process is pruning the old away so that the new can grow. It is imperative for this to happen. And so, we feel pain in the in-between, but that pain is a gift from God.

In John chapter 15 Jesus is challenging us to surrender to the pruning process. He is comforting us, even though it is painful, with the profound truth that in order to grow, in order to produce lasting and rich fruit, we must give ourselves completely to the pruning process:

“I am the vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit…”

John 15:1

There are branches in our lives that are not fruit bearing branches. It is God’s grace that offers to cut them out so that we are no longer enslaved to the superfluous materials and waste that clutter up our hearts, minds, focus and purposes. He cuts off every branch – every distraction and hidden issue – that does not bear fruit. What an incredible gift.

The in-between season in transition is probably the most vulnerable of stages in the process. Everything is laid bare. We can’t hide our dead and fruitless branches from anyone. While we may have been able to block out those hidden things behind our old identities and our old successes, when we step out of that place of comfort every single part of our souls become exposed.

And God graciously uses this time to cut off the dead branches.

“…while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

John 15:1

Guess what…not every branch and every limb needs to be chopped. This is good news! In spite of ourselves, if we are walking with Christ and abiding in Christ, we will produce fruit. This is encouraging to me. However, like my rose bushes in Malawi, in order for the plant to continue to grow and become even more fruitful, it had to be pruned.

In his book, “Building a Discipling Culture”, Mike Breen discusses the natural rhythms of life in our spiritual journey. Like a pendulum that moves from one side to the other in a focused rhythm and steady speed, so our lives move from pruning to growing. Both seasons are necessary for ongoing growth and fruitfulness. He also likens this process to the balance of rest and work. These seasons of pruning – that we surmise as punishment or discipline or something painful to be avoided – are actually seasons of rest.

The pruning season allows us to rest in submission to the purposeful work God is longing to do in us spiritually. He prunes back the fruitful branches. Yes, we had experienced a great season of fruitfulness in our previous ministry and identities. We can point to specific victories that bolster our faith and give us the confidence to move forward. But to move forward and into an increased season of fruit bearing, even those past victories must be pruned. And the best way to walk through this process is to surrender to it and rest in it.

Breathe.

Take a Sabbath rest.

Inventory the areas that God is pruning, and let them go. Allow him access to every single fruit bearing branch.

Because, the next season to come is growth.

How do we do this? How do we allow this pruning process to take over?

Simple:

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (emphasis mine).”

John 15:5

The first gift we receive from the wilderness of transition is pruning. The way to allow God full access to work out this process is by abiding and remaining in him. The fruit we bore in the past, and the fruit we will bear in the future, are not harvests we can manufacture on our own. This fruit is from God. Apart from him we bear nothing but dried up dead branches.

I don’t want leftover fruit. I want fresh fruit to grow out of my life and the only way to accomplish that is to remain steadfast in Christ. He is the vine…he is the source and the resource…apart from him I can do nothing.

Recognizing this and embracing this process will set you up to move into your new identity and your new beginning with humility and grace.

The wilderness is not a final destination, and neither is the pruning season. We were not meant to live in either of these stages forever. There will be many more in-between seasons to navigate throughout our lives, just as there will be regular seasons of pruning. Walk slowly and rest in the gift of the pruning zone.  Allow God’s work to be accomplished, and keep your eyes focused on Jesus.