By Oluwaseyi Ayodeji, Published on oluwaseyiayodeji.com | Regal Stack Newsletter
There are some seasons of life that make sense only in hindsight. At the time, they just feel hard. One year, I lost my job, our basement flooded, a buyer walked away from our house because of a water heater, and my wife and I spent months waiting for something we desperately wanted. That same year ended with two of the best pieces of news we'd had in a long time.
I just didn't know that was how the story would end.
“There are some seasons of life that make sense only in hindsight. At the time, they just feel hard. ”
A Year That Began in Faith
The year started the way many years do: in prayer. My wife and I had spent most of our marriage living in different states, waiting for the day we'd finally get to live under the same roof.
Our story had already involved a lot of waiting. We met through a mutual friend while she was visiting from Scotland, and we clicked almost immediately. A few months into dating, she had to return to finish her studies. I'd always said I'd never do long distance. Then I fell in love with her.
So there I was, doing FaceTime and Skype, flying across time zones, and finding ways to make a relationship work across thousands of miles. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. for another degree. We could finally see an end to the distance. A little over a year later, we got married in Nigeria, surrounded by family and friends.
It was a beautiful day. Then the wedding was over, and reality returned. She went back to Texas to finish school. I moved to Colorado for a new job. The plan was simple: she'd graduate, we'd reunite, and we'd finally start our life together in the same place.
For the first time in years, we had a finish line. Or so we thought.
The Pressure of Waiting
Marriage is a blessing. Marriage across state lines is a different kind of blessing. And then there were the questions.
“When are we hearing the good news?”
“Any updates?”
“Are you sure everything's okay?”
At first, we laughed them off. We knew the timing was in God's hands. But after a while, questions from other people become questions you start asking yourself.
Is something wrong? Should we be doing something? Do we need medical help? The pressure came from outside, but eventually it found its way inside our own heads. We never stopped believing God would come through. But believing doesn't mean waiting is easy.
Sometimes faith is tested not by what happens, but by how long nothing seems to happen.
“We never stopped believing God would come through. But believing doesn’t mean waiting is easy.”
Then the Job Fell Apart
The Colorado job was supposed to be a fresh start. Within months, I knew I'd made the wrong move. I'd come from semiconductor process engineering into life sciences manufacturing, so I was already learning an entirely different industry. The learning curve was steep, and the environment made it steeper. There wasn't much training or onboarding.
Departments operated in silos. Communication was difficult. Leadership wasn't effective. The culture felt cliquish, and fitting in was harder than I expected. I was trying to learn a new industry while also trying to figure out how to navigate an organization that wasn't giving me much of a runway. Eventually, I started looking for something else. By the time I was laid off, I wasn't completely surprised. It still hurt.
Losing a job has a way of making everything feel heavier. The paycheck stops. The bills don't. The mortgage doesn't. Life keeps moving even when your career suddenly doesn't.
Fortunately, we'd done something earlier that year that would become far more important than we realized. We had read Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover and decided to get serious about saving. That emergency fund carried us through the next four months.
Without it, things would have been much harder.
Four Months That Felt Like Forever
Four months doesn't sound like a long time. When you're unemployed, it can feel like an eternity. I was alone in our Colorado home for most of that time, and I knew I couldn't afford to sit around waiting for my circumstances to change. So I created a routine. I applied for jobs. I rewrote my résumé. I tightened my LinkedIn profile. I started an Amazon business my wife and I had talked about for years but never actually started. I volunteered at church because I needed people around me. I exercised regularly because I knew that if I kept my body moving, it would help keep my mind moving too. And I wrote. A lot. Some of those articles were professional. Some were really just me trying to process what I was going through. That routine became my lifeline. It gave my days structure when everything else felt uncertain. It also changed the way I think about work. I'd experienced firsthand what happens when someone enters an organization without the training, context, relationships, or support they need to succeed. Years later, when I started building workforce programs, I carried that experience with me. I knew what it felt like to be the person on the other side. But at the time, I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was just trying to get through the week.
Then the basement flooded.
Of Course, There Was a Water Heater
The message came from our Airbnb guest. The basement had flooded. The culprit? A broken water heater. Now we had a major repair on our hands, and we'd lost the Airbnb income that had been helping cushion everything else. I remember thinking:
Surely this is enough.
Apparently, it wasn't.
Then Things Started to Shift
By Thanksgiving, we'd decided to sell the house. The timing wasn't great. Showings were slow. I was frustrated and exhausted. So I made another decision. I moved to Texas to be with my wife while we waited for the house to sell. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I'd made all year. While I was in Texas, I finally heard back from a company I'd been interviewing with. The onsite had gone well. There were still a few steps left, but for the first time in months, I felt like something was moving in the right direction. Around the same time, the house started getting more attention. We received an offer. Finally.
Then the buyer walked away after the inspection. The reason? You guessed it. The water heater. More repairs. More waiting. At that point, I'd almost stopped trying to predict what would happen next. And maybe that was part of the lesson. Because within a few weeks, two things happened that I couldn't have planned, timed, or engineered myself. I got the job offer. I signed. And then my wife and I found out we were expecting a baby.
The Same Year. The Same Story.
I've thought about that year many times since. I sometimes wonder what the story would have looked like if I'd written it halfway through. After the layoff, it would have been a story about disappointment. After the flooded basement, it would have been about frustration. After the house sale fell through, it would have been about one more thing going wrong. After months of waiting for a baby, it would have been about unanswered prayers. But that wasn't the end of the story. The job I lost made room for a better one. The months of uncertainty taught us to trust God without having all the answers. The distance that had defined so much of our marriage finally came to an end. And the thing we'd been praying for was already on its way. We just couldn't see it yet.
What Waiting Taught Me
I've learned that faith doesn't always feel victorious. Sometimes it looks like applying for another job when you have no idea when the next one will come. Sometimes it looks like opening your bank account, taking a deep breath, and trusting God while still doing everything you can to be responsible with what you have. Sometimes it looks like showing up at church because you know you need people around you. Sometimes it looks like sending another résumé, making another phone call, taking another step, and saying another prayer. And sometimes it simply looks like getting through today without giving up on tomorrow. If you're in a season like that right now, I don't know what your breakthrough will look like. I don't know when it will come.
But I do know this: You don't have the full story yet.
There were moments that year when I thought I was watching everything fall apart. I didn't realize I was also watching things come together. So if you're waiting, keep going. If you're disappointed, keep going. If the door closed, keep going. And if you can't see what God is doing yet, don't assume He isn't doing anything. Some of the most important parts of your story may already be unfolding. You just haven't reached that chapter yet.
Sometimes the hardest part of faith isn't believing that God can change your story. It's believing He is still writing it while you're waiting.
“Sometimes the hardest part of faith isn’t believing that God can change your story. It’s believing He is still writing it while you’re waiting.”
