"I wasted my twenties and thirties raising kids instead of building a career or ministry."
How it sounds in your head: Other women were climbing ladders, building platforms, making names for themselves. I was wiping noses and packing lunches. Now they're established and I'm starting from scratch with nothing to show for those years.
"I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust."
-- Joel 2:25Source: world system that measures worth by achievement and visibility, promoted by hustle culture and comparison through social media.
She watches younger women with influence she doesn't have, sees peers who chose careers now financially secure. The world doesn't value what happens in the hidden years of motherhood.
Hannah had YEARS of barrenness and mockery while Peninnah had children and status. One encounter at the temple, one prayer, and God gave her Samuel who changed a nation—her ONE son had more impact than all of Peninnah's children combined, and she got five more children after.
I REFUSE the lie that years spent in obscurity are wasted years. IT IS WRITTEN that God will RESTORE the years the locust has eaten—not leave me behind, not make me catch up, but RESTORE with acceleration. IT IS WRITTEN that the last will be first, and those who lose their life find it. My hidden years of faithfulness were INVESTMENT, not loss. The BARAK blessing is mine by covenant—I am blessed coming in and going out, in the city and in the field, and what comes NOW will eclipse what came before. God is not fair—He's GENEROUS, and He pays latecomers the same as those who started at dawn.
The Father is saying, 'Daughter, what you call wasted I call PREPARED. Those years were not lost—they were planted, and now comes the harvest.' He's about to release in one year what would normally take ten, because that's who He is.