"A secret place of encounter - the intimacy of the Garden"

“Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved?”
— Song of Songs 8:5

Not every bride is trained in the palace.

Some of us are trained in the wilderness.

My story — our story — wasn’t shaped by instant intimacy.
It was shaped in hidden places.
In confusion. In silence. In pain.

For eleven years, I walked through what I now call: The Wilderness Test.

Before the silence, there was fire.

I heard the Lord speak to me:

“You are the one I have been looking for.”
“My wife. My bride.”

I encountered Him in visions and dreams.
I saw the secret chamber — the place of covenant.
I felt the holy weight of being chosen.

But not long after that —
The enemy came.

He attacked my womb, my mind, my identity, my intimacy.
And then came the misunderstanding within the church.
Instead of being covered, I was labeled.
Instead of being discipled, I was silenced.

And I began to doubt everything I had heard.

To survive the warfare, I sought refuge in the church system.

But the church — at least the one I was in — didn’t know what to do with someone like me.
A woman with dreams too holy to explain.
A hunger too intense to package.

They gave me labels, not language.
Rules, but not refuge.

And in my longing to belong, I buried my bridal scroll.

I told myself:
“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I imagined Him.
Maybe I was deceived.”

I tried to forget the visions.
I tried to serve like everyone else.
But nothing quenched the ache.
Because I wasn’t called to fit in.
I was called to be set apart.

For eleven years, He said almost nothing.

I thought He had left.
I thought I had failed Him too deeply.
But in truth — He was waiting.

“I did not speak because of your unbelief,” He told me later.
 

That sentence broke me.
But it also healed me.

I had stopped believing in His voice.
Not in His existence — but in His desire to speak to me personally.

I silenced Him by exalting the church’s voice over His.
I let spiritual confusion — born of trauma and fear — drown out the intimacy we once had.

The wilderness was not punishment.
It was purification.

“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you… to know what was in your heart…”
— Deuteronomy 8:2

My wilderness was eleven years long.

In those years, He exposed:

My dependence on human affirmation

My dependence to church structure instead of Spirit flow

My confusion between performance and pleasure

My fear of deception

My unbelief in my identity as His Bride
 

And in that testing, He rewrote me.
Not loudly, but slowly.
Not in public, but in secret.

When the test ended, I emerged with:

A heart that aches for His voice 

Ears trained to silence, not just sermons 

A womb purified to carry holy things again 

A reverence for intimacy I never had before 

A knowing that He never left — He was weeping with me
 

“In all their suffering He also suffered…”
— Isaiah 63:9

“Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved?”
— Song of Songs 8:5

That verse is my life now.

I didn’t exit the wilderness as a minister.
I came out as a Bride.

Weary, yes — but wiser.
Wounded, but worshiping.
And finally, leaning on the One who never let me go.

If you’re in that place now — misunderstood, silenced, aching —
Hear me, sister:

You’re not forsaken. You’re being refined.

You are in the Wilderness Test.
And one day, you will emerge, too.

Leaning.

And He will say,

“Now we are talking.”