E30 | How God Uses Pain for Purpose | I Never Got My Why - Part 8

What if God was building something while you were still asking why?

In Part 8 of the I Never Got My Why series, Tennille shares how healing often happens quietly—and how purpose can begin emerging long before we recognize it.

Through Isaiah 43:18-19 and her own story of heartbreak, healing, and unexpected community, she explores what it looks like to move from searching for answers to discovering what God may have been growing in the middle of the pain.

In this episode:
• How to recognize signs of healing
• Why purpose often emerges from difficult seasons
• What Isaiah 43 teaches about God's "new thing"
• How God uses heartbreak, loss, and disappointment to shape us

Download the free I Never Got My Why Reflection Guide through the link in the show notes and continue your journey from "Why?" to "For What?"

The Living Story Podcast | Story. Scripture. Seen. Set Free.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

What if the answer to your why is already showing up in your life and you just don't recognize it yet? What if God is already growing something in the soil of this season? A friendship, a purpose, a calling, a version of you that couldn't have existed before the pain Because I never got my why. Not the answer I wanted, not the explanation I thought would finally make everything make sense. But somewhere along the way, I started getting something else, something better The for what does not announce itself. This is the first thing I want you to know about it. It doesn't arrive with a sign that says, "This is the thing God was building while you were in the question." It doesn't show up on a Tuesday morning with a timestamp and a clear label so you can mark it in your journal and close the chapter. It arrives quietly, Like a church family you didn't know you needed until you were sitting in the middle of it and something inside you said, "This is the place." Like a clarity of purpose that came into focus during the season you thought was only taking things from you. Like a calling that found you through the wound that could only have found you through the wound because you wouldn't have been in the right place to receive it if the season had gone differently In Isaiah chapter 43, verses 18 and 19, it says, "Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." Do you not perceive it? That is a question God asked. Not, "Look, the new thing is finished and here it is," but, "Do you not perceive it?" Do you not see it is already springing forth? Do you not notice that something is already happening? The new thing was already in motion before they could see it clearly, and God was asking them to look, Not to wait until it was undeniably obvious. To look now while it was still tender and early and easy to miss. The for what may already be springing forth in your life, the purpose and the reason behind this. The question is whether you are looking because grief narrows your vision. It makes pain feel like the only thing happening, which means sometimes healing begins long before you are emotionally able to recognize it. So let me tell you what I got. I didn't get the relationship I asked for. I didn't get the version of the story I had written in my mind. I didn't get a why that made the pain make sense in the way I wanted it to. What I actually got was a church family. The breakup that I couldn't stop asking why about is the same event that set in motion a series of small decisions that led me to my church, to the community that held me, to the women who sat with me in the middle of the question and didn't rush me out of it. They would pray over me. Some of them would cry with me because they too also knew the pain that I was healing. And to the worship that met me where I actually was instead of where I was performing to be. Every song that held me Every tear that was shared with me. I wouldn't have found that community on the timeline I was living before the season. I didn't know how much I needed it until I was inside it. There were moments where I would look around during worship or after Bible study and realize I was smiling again and laughing And truly expressing joy, not forcing it, not performing okay, but actually laughing And smiling. And the realization would hit me almost sideways because for so long, grief had been the loudest thing in the room, and suddenly it wasn't. What I got was healing in places that had nothing to do with this relationship, and that surprised me because when we're hurting, we assume God is only working on the thing we are grieving. But God rarely works that narrowly. While I was focused on one loss, just one, He was restoring other places in my life, and I couldn't see it until now. I couldn't see it until I started to reflect on everything that's happened in the span of a year. Relationships within my family became healthier. Conversations became softer. Old wounds that had existed long before the breakup started receiving attention for the first time, not being swept under the rug to deal with it at another time. Trust started being rebuilt, not only trusting God but trusting myself. grace started showing up where bitterness could have taken root. I spent so much energy looking at what had been taken away that I almost missed the healing showing up somewhere else. And what I got was new beginnings. Not all at once, not in some dramatic overnight transformation, but little by little. Doors started opening. New things started happening. A new job, or I should say a new teaching position where my principal said he wanted me to be happy, and he values me as an employee and that he was going to miss me in my old position 'cause I did really well in that capacity, but that he believed in me so much he was giving me this chance. A reminder that my story was still moving forward even when part of me felt stuck in what I had lost. There were also new opportunities, invitations I would never have received if I had stayed on the path I was originally trying to force into existence. There were new people that came into my life, people who knew nothing about the chapter that broke me and who met me as a person I was becoming instead of the person I had been. And there were new experiences, moments that reminded me life was still happening and that joy had not permanently left the building. And there were new reasons to hope again, not because all my questions had been answered, but because I was beginning to believe that God could still write beautiful chapters I hadn't yet imagined And new dreams. Dreams that had room for the woman I was becoming, not just the woman who was grieving. And I think that was part of the surprise. I expected healing to look like getting back what I lost. Instead, healing often looked like receiving things I never would have pursued if the season had gone according to my plan. The future I thought I wanted slowly gave way to possibilities I couldn't have seen when I was standing in the middle of the heartbreak. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, purpose started showing up too. Not because I found a five-step plan, not because I suddenly knew exactly what God was doing, but because the questions themselves started producing language. the grief, the waiting, the healing, it all produced language, and eventually that language became an offering I didn't plan this podcast. I didn't map out a five-year strategy for a brand built around women in the middle of something. I walked through a hard season courageously and came out on the other side with language for it, and that language became the offering. The words that once lived only in my journal became conversations, and the conversations became episodes, and the episodes became a place where other women could feel less alone in their own stories. Maybe that is part of what redemption looks like sometimes. Not erasing the wound, not pretending the loss never happened, but allowing something meaningful to grow from that place that hurt. I didn't get a why. I got a for what. And if you had offered me the choice back then, I probably would have chosen the why. I would have chosen the explanation, the closure, the answer, because I didn't yet understand what God was building. I didn't know what church family was waiting. I didn't know healing was waiting. I didn't know new beginnings and purpose and hope was waiting. I didn't know language would become the offering. And the truth is, most of the things I received weren't things I was asking for. I was asking for God to explain the loss, and He was rebuilding my life He was rebuilding my life while I hung on to that one question. I didn't get a why I got, uh, for what? I got purpose. I got reason, and I couldn't have asked for it because I didn't know it existed I wanna say something about the way God builds things. He doesn't always build what you requested. He builds what you need in the shape that will actually serve the purpose He had for you Using materials you didn't know he was collecting during the seasons you thought were only about loss, that were only about mess and hurt and pain. Tears you thought were wasted. Conversations in parking lots. Sundays at the altar. Journal pages nobody else will ever, ever read. The written prayers, begging and pleading while he was building something so much better All of the notes in my Bible And meanwhile God was quietly rebuilding a life that I don't even think I was prepared to understand or know Because when I think about the woman in Mark chapter five, the woman with the issue of blood. For 12 years, she carried a wound she couldn't fix. Twelve years of disappointment, of trying things that didn't work, of living with questions she couldn't answer. And yet, when her moment came, she knew how to reach. she knew how to push through the crowd and to keep hoping after disappointment. She knew how to touch the hem of his garment when everything else had failed her. That kind of reach doesn't come from a life of easy answers. Something had been formed inside her, not because the suffering was good, not because the pain was the goal, but because God never wastes a season. Your season produced something too. You may not be able to name it fully yet And we're not at episode 10 yet, and we're, we are still turning. We are still in that turn. But I want you to start looking for it, not forcing it, not manufacturing a testimony you haven't actually lived yet. Just looking And I want you to just Keep this question in mind. Do you not perceive it? I wanna ask you that the way God asked it in Isaiah, not as a correction, as an invitation. You have been so focused on the why, and understandably so, because the question was real and the pain was real, that You may not have noticed what has already been growing in the soil of that season. A friendship that wouldn't exist without the hard chapter. A resilience you didn't know you had before. A compassion for another woman that you couldn't have had before if you weren't that woman yourself. A deeper faith, a restored relationship, a new dream, a capacity to sit in the question with someone else without rushing her out of it because you know what it feels like to need someone to just simply stay hold your hand and listen Those are for whats. They are quiet. They arrive without announcing themselves, and they are often already here before we know how to recognize them So I wanna close this episode in the same place I opened it. What if the answer to your why is already showing up and you just don't recognize it yet? Because this is how healing often works. Not in the dramatic moment of breakthrough, not in the service where the worship was so good something lifted, but in an ordinary morning when you realize the question that used to greet you every single day has started coming less frequently, and you think, "When did that happen?" And the answer is, while you were still in it, still showing up, still praying, still crying, still taking the next faithful step, still doing the ordinary things that didn't feel like they were working. They were working slowly, quietly in the direction of the for what? Because at some point, healing stops being only about surviving what happened, and starts becoming about recognizing what was being formed inside you while you survived it And if you're walking through this series with me, don't forget to download the free I Never Got My Why reflection guide. It's filled with scriptures and reflection prompts and journal questions to help you process your own story alongside each episode. You'll find the link in the show notes. And we're almost at the close of this series And I'm taking that pause because It is truly amazing when I reflect back And I think of this whole process And how amazing it is. I'm in awe But I do wanna say something because there are still times I still go back. I still go back to that why, and that's okay because next Tuesday, I'm gonna discuss more about that. As always, I want you to remember and hold this until we see each other on the next episode that you are seen even here, even now, even in the why