Published by Nancy Duarte | Life on Earth Ministries | Bible Chicks Teacher

I recall sitting in my car in a parking lot, crying so hard I could not breathe.
I had just come from a situation where the floor had dropped out of my life. Someone I trusted, someone I had given years of my heart to — had chosen to betray me in a way I never saw coming. And I sat there asking God the question that I have heard thousands of women ask me since.

Why would You let this happen to me?
Maybe you have been in that parking lot. Maybe yours looked different — a hospital waiting room, the kitchen floor at 2AM, a car in the driveway you could not bring yourself to walk out of. But you know the feeling. The ground is gone. The future is unrecognizable. The person who was supposed to be safe turned out to be the source of your deepest wound.
If that is where you are right now — this blog is for you.

The Story That Changed Everything For Me

Years ago, a woman came to one of my sessions. I will call her Maria. She had been in a toxic marriage for eleven years. When it ended, she did not just lose a husband; she lost her home, her financial security, her circle of friends, and the version of herself around which she had constructed her entire identity.
She sat across from me and said, I feel like I am at the bottom of a hole and I cannot see the top.

I said, Maria, I need to tell you about a boy named Joseph.
Because the story of Joseph in scripture is not simply a Bible story. It is a roadmap. And it is the most honest description of what it feels like to be betrayed by someone who should have loved you that I have ever read.

Joseph — The Boy His Brothers Threw Away

Joseph was seventeen. His father loved him deeply. God had given him dreams, specific, extraordinary dreams about the future he was being prepared for. His whole life was ahead of him.

And his brothers threw him into a pit.
Not enemies. Not strangers. His brothers. The men who shared his blood, his table, and his childhood.

Here is the detail that has always stopped me in my tracks. After they threw him in, Genesis 37:25 tells us they sat down and ate a meal.

They ate. While he was in the pit.
I want to ask you something right now. Has someone who should have loved you ever continued their life seemingly unbothered, while you were at the bottom of something they put you in?

That is the particular cruelty of betrayal by someone close. It is not just the wound of what happened. It is the wound of who did it.

What the Pit Looks Like in Real Life

Joseph’s pit was literal. Yours probably looks different. But it is no less real.
The pit shows up as:

A marriage that ended in a way you never saw coming
A friendship that turned and used what it knew about you against you
A family member who believed the lie and chose someone else
A workplace situation where you were falsely accused and nobody defended you
A church that wounded you in the place you came to be healed
Years of waiting that appeared like silence from a God you have been faithful to

Whatever your pit looks like, you did not choose it. And it is not your final address.

The Four Words That Appear Over and Over

After Joseph left the pit, he went to Potiphar’s house. Then to prison on a false accusation. Then two years of waiting. He went through season after season that made no human sense.

And through every single one of them, the same four words appear in scripture.
The Lord was with Joseph.
Not the Lord made it easy. Not, the Lord explained what He was doing. Not the Lord fast-tracked the timeline.

The Lord was with Joseph. In the pit. In the prison. In the years that appeared like nothing was happening. In the injustice. Inside the silence.
He was there.

And this is what I want to say to you from the bottom of my heart. He was in yours too. He was in the room when it happened. He was present in the waiting. He was working every moment, which felt like abandonment.
You were never as alone as it felt.

How Betrayal Turned into a Bridge

Here is the part of Joseph’s story that most people miss when they read it quickly.
If his brothers had not betrayed him, Joseph would never have ended up in Egypt. If he never goes to Egypt, he is never positioned to interpret Pharaoh’s dream. If he never interprets the dream, he never rises to second in command. If he never rises, millions of people will die in the famine. And the very brothers who threw him in the pit? They starve too.

The betrayal was the bridge.
The thing designed to end Joseph’s story became the pathway to his purpose.
Now I want to be clear, I am not saying what was done to you was acceptable. I am not minimizing the damage of betrayal or implying the person who hurt you had no responsibility.
What I am saying is this: God is so extraordinarily redemptive that He can take the worst thing someone did to you and weave it into the most important chapter of your story.
He does not waste your pain.

Why the Attack Got Harder Right Before the Breakthrough

Something I have noticed in decades of ministry, and in my own life, is that the opposition often intensifies right before something significant happens.
For Joseph, it looked like this:

He was in Potiphar’s house. Things were looking up. Then, a false accusation. Prison.
He was in prison. He interpreted the cupbearer’s dream. He asked to be remembered.

Then, two more years of waiting.
And then. In one day. Everything changed.

The hardest fight came right before the promotion.
If you are in a season where all things feel like they are coming against you, where you take one step forward and something knocks you back, I want you to pay attention to that.
The enemy does not waste his energy on people who are not a threat to him. He fights hardest against the purpose he most wants to stop.
The intensity of the opposition is sometimes the clearest sign of the significance of what God is building in you.
Hold on.

The Question I Had to Ask Myself

I want to be real with you for a moment.
For a long time, I held unforgiveness like a justified possession. I had good reasons. What was done to me was real. The wound was legitimate. So I kept it close, replaying it, revisiting it, keeping a careful account of every detail.
And one day God asked me a question that stopped me completely.
How long are you going to let them live rent-free in the most valuable real estate you own?
Because that is what unforgiveness does. It gives the person who hurt you ongoing access to your peace, thoughts, sleep, and future. It keeps you emotionally locked in the pit long after you have physically left it.
Releasing someone is not saying what they did was okay.
Releasing someone is saying, “I refuse to let what you did to me determine where I am going.”

Joseph looked at the brothers who threw him in the pit, brothers who were now desperate, humbled, terrified — and he wept. And he said the words that changed everything.
You intended to harm me. But God intended it for good.

Genesis 50:20.
That is not just forgiveness. That is freedom.

Three Things to Carry With You Today

Before you close this blog, I want to leave you with three things:

1. Your pit has a purpose you cannot yet see.
   What feels like your lowest point may be the exact preparation for your highest calling. The wisdom, the compassion, the depth of faith you are developing at the bottom of this — none of it exists without the pit.
2. The people God uses most powerfully have the longest testimonies.
   Joseph did not save a nation despite what he went through. He saved a nation because of it. Your story — all of it — is part of what makes you dangerous to the enemy and invaluable to the people you are being prepared to reach.
3. You are not alone in there.
   The Lord was with Joseph. In the pit. In the prison. In every season that appeared like abandonment. He is with you in yours. Even when you cannot feel it. Especially when you cannot feel it.

A Prayer for the Woman in the Pit

Lord, what the enemy meant for my destruction, You are turning into my destiny. I release every person who put me in a pit. I release every moment of betrayal. I choose to believe that You are using all of it for my good. Take me from the pit to the palace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Your Declaration for This Week

Speak this out loud every morning. Even if you do not feel it yet. Speak it anyway:
What was meant to destroy me is being used to define me. My pit was preparation for my palace.

Before You Go — One Question

Who is the woman you are going to reach on the other side of this?
Because Maria, the woman I told you about at the beginning, is now one of the most powerful voices in her community for women healing from toxic marriages. She could not have been that woman without the pit. She could not have reached those women without the story she carries.
Your pit is not the end of your story. It is the making of it.

Nancy Duarte is a Bible teacher, certified life coach, victim advocate, Christian counselor, and founder of Life on Earth Ministries, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women, single mothers, and children through faith, healing, and purpose. She has spent over 26 years walking alongside women through their hardest seasons.

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