| ENTRY 007 | COMING UP FOR AIR
Hey friends! It’s been about one month since I’ve really been able to sit down, write, and produce a full Blog or Podcast entry. I am finally coming up for air…and I am using each breath I take to TESTIFY!
Let’s talk about what God can do with just 1 month and your YES!
If you’ve been following Working While Wounded for the brief amount of time that it has been around, then you probably know that I have just recently gone through one of the biggest transition seasons of my life. If you’re new here:
Hi, my name is Keliz White and I am building the Working While Wounded digital ministry publication and community where we talk all things Jesus, Faith, Obedience, and Purpose — especially through the difficult seasons. Much of what we focus on here is navigating how to remain faithful to the Lord when life sometimes doesn’t make sense, because God is still worthy of our devotion and we are serious about our salvation and transformation through His son, Jesus Christ. Welcome in, I invite you to subscribe and stay connected with W|W|W to keep up with all future content!
Exiting the military, I had a degree, a security clearance, and all the experience I needed to make a break into the civilian sector, doing similar work that I did while in the Army. As the time inched closer to my official exit date out of the military, I prepared myself the best that I could. But to my surprise, application after application, referral after referral, virtual career summits, resume work shops and an internship later, all the doors were closed. 0 call backs. 0 interviews. Nothing. Everyone I worked with had nothing but good things to say about my effort, my ethics, and even assured me that I would land another great gig to match the accomplished, six-figure life that I was leaving behind. I was really confused. I wondered why God told me to walk in this direction if I wasn’t going to be met with success. On top of that, my life felt like it was falling apart in more areas than one.
God put an end to a 3-year romantic relationship that I carried so much love and hope for, and even had dreams of it leading to marriage. It caused a painful experience of release, but that was just one of many. In the same time frame, a roommate moved out of my house, and with them went additional income support. I had about one month of savings to my name outside of retirement, and no plan for how life was going to work out from there. But I remembered that throughout all the struggles in my life, God had shown up, even when I didn’t turn to Him. Although everything was going the opposite of what I envisioned, I reminded myself that God was still worthy of my worship and obedience even when life felt upside down, and I kept walking.
I didn’t backtrack and decide to stay in the military where income was certain, and I felt safe, even though some encouraged me to. With tears in my eyes, I released the relationship when He told me to. When I feared what my life would look like with no job, I put my financial circumstances in His hands. There were months of waiting on the Lord. There was a lot of prayer, a lot of fasting, a lot of therapy and grieving, a lot of leaning…and then finally, there was a shift.
In the beginning of July this year, He spoke to me clearly during a midnight prayer session, saying, “Working While Wounded. This is the name of your Podcast. It has oil over it. It is a healing ministry.” He began to explain the vision of this ministry to me and the purpose behind it: to encourage others through my own obedience, to keep pursuing the Lord — even when it hurts. As I leaned into Him for healing, he began revealing. Even as healing was still an active process, He wanted me to continue the good works that He called me to, which was to encourage others to come to Jesus for rest when they are weary, be filled by the peace that comes with His presence, and then be sent out to continue the faithful work that is sharing the good news of His word with those who may not have encountered Him yet. I felt the weight of the call and I was moved to answer it.
To be honest, I had no idea how to start a Podcast, I had no experience, but I just started where I knew everyone else started: YouTube. From there, continuing to faithfully post the words that He gave me, the platform expanded over the course of 2 months, into what you may read and see now across multiple platforms with various methods of content production. And all of it has been built by leaning on the Lord.
In the time that God told me to start building, it was truthfully the last thing on my mind to be concerned about. There wasn’t any money in starting up. I was worried about my transition out of the Army and finding a job. But, He spoke to me about not applying for anymore jobs and told me to focus on building what He placed in my hands. Feeling a little crazy and even irresponsible (sometimes big faith can do that to you), I decided that I had already surrendered so much to God in my past season, that I might as well just surrender this as well and start what He is telling me to start.
Fast forward, in just 2 months of building W|W|W, it continued growing little by little, into an accumulation of 187 followers and over 13.6K views! Greater than that, I realized that building this was helping not just me, but others I know personally, find greater intimacy with God! It has also helped foster deeper healing, reignite a fire for the Lord that I desperately needed and has even unlocked a sense of creativity that I hadn’t tapped into in a long time.
If this was as far as W|W|W went, I’d still be glad to say I started. But praise God, because the story doesn’t end there.
This is where it gets REALLY GOOD!
I kept building all the way through my final days in the military, and finally, on September 1st, 2026 my departure from the Army was official; it only took a full year of waiting! I was excited for and nervous about what the future held, but I did my best to trust that God was going to make it all come together…and then He started showing me the bigger picture!
The Lord began speaking to me about the season that I had just come out of. He walked me through the book of Exodus and highlighted that the Israelites were being delivered from captivity in Egypt—a place that had once made them slaves. When He spoke to me about how leaving the Army was symbolic of leaving Egypt, it wasn’t because it was a bad career choice, but it was because I had put my hope and trust in a financially stable career rather than in God as my provider, which led me into a sort of mental captivity. He specifically convicted me with the verse of Matthew 6:33, “You cannot serve both God and money.” He revealed to me that chasing financial stability and worldly success over purpose made me a slave to money; it made me view money as the master of my life rather than as just a tool and resource provided by the Lord and used to carry out His work and will for my life. He paralleled me to the Israelites:
He was delivering me from captivity → into a wilderness (a space that looks depleted and lacks general resources) → and then into the promised land (a place full of provision, grace, and abundance).
To make things even crazier, my transition out of the Army was made official at midnight on September 1st, and the bible says that at midnight is when God struck the firstborn sons of Egypt, which is what triggered Pharaoh to release the Israelites!
Exodus 12:29-31
29 Now at midnight the LORD struck every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the livestock. 30 During the night Pharaoh got up, he along with all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud wailing throughout Egypt because there wasn’t a house without someone dead. 31 He summoned Moses and Aaron during the night and said, “Get out immediately from among my people, both you and the Israelites, and go, worship the Lord as you have said.
Then things got deeper, and I studied God’s instructions to Moses when the Israelites entered the wilderness. The wilderness was intended to be a place where the Israelites could draw nearer to God by deepening their reliance on Him, worshipping Him, and sacrificing to Him to show honor and gratitude for the ways that He had miraculously delivered them. God specifically told Moses to tell Pharaoh:
Exodus 3:18
18 The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Now please let us go on a three-day trip into the wilderness so that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.
What I learned is that the Israelites, within the first 3 days of being in the wilderness, were supposed to make a sacrifice to God to worship Him, not because the sacrifice mattered, but because a heart of obedience, worship, and dependency on the Lord did. However, instead, they spent their time focusing on the barrenness of what they were walking through. They complained, saying that life would have been better had they just stayed in Egypt. They complained when they lacked food and water, and asked God for provision, yet never acknowledged or observed the original instructions that He gave them. Ultimately, God provided even in their disobedience, but their refusal to obey God and his commands over a series of the next 40 years, kept them in the wilderness far longer than 3-days, delaying their entry into the promised land. In fact, an entire (faithless) generation died and did not enter into it. This passage of scripture humbled me and I felt the Lord asking me the question:
What do you think would have happened if the Israelites would have just worshipped me within the first 3 days of being in the wilderness like I originally intended?
What do you think I would have done for them in that time?
So, in my wilderness, having just transitioned from one season of life and being placed into a season of waiting, I decided to find out the answer to that question.
I dedicated the first 3 days of September to prayer, fasting, worship, and thanksgiving for what the Lord had just walked me out of and for what I knew He was about to walk me into, even though I had yet to see the promises come to pass.
During that fast, I began reading in the book of Nehemiah—you know that guy, famous for rebuilding the walls of the holy city Jerusalem and the holy temple of the Lord that had once been torn to rubble because of the Israelite’s idolatry? Yeah, also a very accurate story for the stage of life I was in, but that’s another blog for another time.
Anyways, while reading in this book and being on this fast, I also attended a conference called the Kingdom Business Women’s Conference hosted by the Kingdom Builders Academy. As if it wasn’t already staring me in the face, it became clear then that God was asking me to build something with this platform that I had never built before and to rebuild my heart of worship for Him simultaneously.
After praying and seeking confirmation for those 3 days, God pushed me to pursue a double-degree program offered by the same academy, in which I could earn a bachelor’s degree in ministry and a master’s degree in business and ministry, which also offered the opportunity to build the ministry and business that He spoke to me about as a part of earning the degree…wild.
I honestly thought to myself, God, I already have a degree and I didn’t plan on going back to school just yet. Plus I definitely don’t have the finances for it. But, He confirmed it to me, told me to take the step, and next thing you know, I took out a hefty amount in loans to start this program not knowing how I was going to make all the payments. I cried to the Lord. It felt like I was taking a huge risk. But again, I faced another moment where I just had to put it in His hands. I said Lord, if it’s your will, it’s your bill! You’re gonna have to help me fund it, and I put Him to the test! Do you want to know a secret?
GOD PROVED HIMSELF FAITHFUL.
Four days later, after taking out the loans and committing to the program, I received a direct deposit from the Army for my final paycheck and on the same day, I also received a notification that I was approved to receive payments, due to the service-related injuries I incurred. I kid you not, the amount that I was approved to receive that day, was equal to almost the exact dollar amount of what I had just taken out in loans for school!!!!! Isn’t God crazy!?
I was already in shock and awe when I was seeing all of this, but it went even deeper than that—For general context, in some cases, additional benefits can be extended to the family members of service members who receive disability compensation. One of the big benefits can include assistance with funds for higher education schooling.
I acknowledged this as a massive blessing in the financial area, but receiving that notification wasn’t just about financial provision. It felt more like God was telling me that His outpouring of blessings is going to go beyond just me; it’s going to extend to my future children and the next generation that is raised up. It felt like He was saying, they will be cared for, provided for, and there will be a generational wealth that encompasses not just the riches of earth, but the spiritual riches of heaven. He shared with me that this was just the beginning of the legacy that He was helping me to create and leave behind.
Can I just tell you that when the Lord asks you to completely trust Him with a decision, do it! If you know it’s His voice that is leading you, TRUST HIM. Even if you feel crazy, even if you’re scared, even if you are worried about the outcome, place it in His hands and walk forward in obedience, because NOTHING that you do for the Lord is wasted. What you gain from walking with Him is far greater than what you might lose along the way, whether it’s financial, physical, emotional; He will provide far past your expectations!
This moment alone could have been enough proof of His goodness, but God just kept going. In this one month of September, the month of the Jewish New Year (FYI I just learned that about this month), God’s grace has been on full display.
At the same time that all of this was happening, my dad had come to visit for the week. I was excited for us to get some great, uninterrupted bonding time in! But, let’s be honest, sometimes visits with family can get…complicated. While love remains — many child-parent relationships carry wounds that require deeper healing as we grow into adults; and sometimes there’s hard conversations that need to be had to work those things out. I believe that deep emotional healing requires a certain level of confrontation to truly address the wound. Addressing might look different from person to person, but from what I have experienced, a healing conversation filled with the grace, truth, and love of the Lord, is like the balanced medical Saline mixture of salt and water. Let me explain.
The biblical symbology on this, is found in the following verses describing what the roles of salt and water are in this context:
Matthew 5:13
13 You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty?
Jeremiah 2:13
13 They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns for themselves — cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.
Jesus says in the new testament book of Matthew, that we, as believers, are the salt of the earth. The symbolism of believers as salt, is to live and maintain a life righteous to the Lord, keeping back moral decay and infection that gets stirred up by the enemy. In the old testament, as seen in the book of Jeremiah, the Lord describes Himself as the fountain of living water. Living water is who God is; He refreshes and hydrates the soul through the sheer character of who He is. On its own, salt in a wound without proper water dilution is irritating and even more damaging than it is helpful. However, if you properly mix the salt with water, you get Saline, a healing mixture.
Saline acts as a modern medical disinfectant that gets poured into a wound to clean out the dirt and debris, without damaging the delicate skin. This helps initiate healing.
Now, back to how this relates to a conversation with my dad. By this point, it’s the second week of September and I decided to make a 3-day fast into a 21-day fast (that’s another story for another time). Just two days before my dad was supposed to leave and we were to close out a great, heart warming trip, I was praying that morning and I heard the Lord say “Forgive your dad and ask for forgiveness. Invite me into the middle for healing.” I knew the situation he wanted me to talk about forgiveness for was a touchy one and for me, a difficult conversation with my dad about that particular topic was the last thing on my mind—it felt like it would be more of an irritant and would ruin the mood than anything. Plus, I thought I had worked everything out in therapy and that I didn’t really need to do any more talking. I certainly didn’t think that this was going to be the trip where God said re-unpack it all. But, once again, to my surprise — God told me to rip the band-aid off. Somewhere deep down, I knew that if I mixed my salt with God’s water of wisdom, only healing could come from it—even if it didn’t look pretty at first.
The same day that God told me to bring up the conversation that I reaaaallllyyyyyyy didn’t want to have at first, I was reading up on my 21-day Consecration Devotional by Chicago Tabernacle, and the focus was on the book of Esther. The title of the devotional was “Fasting Into Courage.” The devotional highlighted how Esther, a Jewish girl turned Queen of Persia, was asked to use her position as queen to enter into the king’s court and ask for all the Jews to be spared from death at the hands of a man named Haman. Esther, afraid that she would be murdered if she entered the king’s court without a formal invitation, was hesitant to do so. In her worry, she entered a 3-day fast to lean on the Lord for the courage to do what needed to be done.
Esther displayed a heart posture that was highlighted to me as she decided to do the fast and ultimately have this difficult conversation with the king, meanwhile, risking her life to do so. She says that after she completes the fast, she will go to the king regardless of the rules. And then she makes a simple, yet profound statement:
Esther 4:16
16 If I perish, I perish.
That stuck out to me like a sore thumb, because I knew God was asking me to do a similar thing. Bring up a difficult conversation that was supposed to lead to healing and forgiveness, but that could also open up a can of worms and backfire on me. Truthfully, I didn’t want to deal with it due to the emotional tension. I was afraid to do it, because I didn’t know what the reaction or response would be, I just knew that there could be potential negative impacts before it ever had any positive ones. Even still, just like Esther, I had to take up the mindset of obedience even if it cost me comfort.
And then there was a statement in the devotional that pierced my heart, “As you draw near to God, He steadies your heart to obey in areas where you’ve been hesitant. He can give you boldness to confront patterns, have hard conversations, begin new steps, or break with old habits. Courage grows in the secret place.” It was then that I fully knew it was time to have the conversation.
So, on the last day of the trip, I prayed that the Lord would give me courage, the words to say, and would create an opportunity for me to talk with my dad. An opportunity opened up and I took it. I did what the Lord asked. I asked my dad for forgiveness of past things that I had said or done to hurt him and I forgave him for things that he had said or done. And, unsurprisingly, it did open a can of worms. A lot of emotions came out, but I knew the Lord wanted to expose the wounds that had not fully healed so that he could do a deeper healing in both of us and deepen our relationship as father and daughter.
I’m not going to lie, at first I felt set up by God because it didn’t go as expected—that conversation blew up in my face when it came to the grief and the pain sitting between the both of us, but I pressed forward, because I knew what God spoke. My dad was initially upset that I brought it up, because he didn’t want to spend time dwelling on the past, and he felt like God had already healed him. But if there’s anything I have learned with God, it’s that sometimes the same pain will come up over and over again, so that you have to forgive and heal from it in a new way, because there’s something deeper that God wants you to grasp; in each layer of healing a new layer of your heart is refined. It can also be used as a test to see how differently you respond to the pain over time, almost like a metric of how much work God has done on your heart to respond more like Jesus in painful moments. As Christians we live a lifetime of refinement and triggers are really just identifiers of areas where we still need God to heal us, and refine us to have less fleshly and more Christ-like responses.
Anyways, the next morning I prayed with my dad and I invited God into the middle for healing, to do a deep uprooting of past pain and trauma in both of us. This is where more of the hard conversation continued, but we got through it. Then, I took him to the airport and sent him on his way back home. We hugged it out and said “I love you.” But something still felt stiff. I was sad and confused, because I knew that I was obedient, but I didn’t know if that one action had just caused a rift in the relationship with my dad or actually started healing it like God initially told me it would. So I prayed on the way home that God would have His way, would move in our hearts and would use the situation for good.
And then something beautiful happened. My dad called when he landed and he apologized to me for different things and told me how much he loved me. Later, we talked it out, I apologized and both of us felt seen. felt heard. felt loved.
My dad then told me that he saw this conversation as an opportunity from God to release old emotions and heal his inner soul. I have never heard him say anything like that, so I knew that God truly had initiated a deeper healing process than either of us ever expected. From there, we decided to do a weekly prayer call with one another to continue the process of healing through faith in the Lord.
Family dynamics can be complex; there’s so much love and so many good moments shared and then sometimes there’s tough ones. But in that heartwarming moment with my dad, I understood that we are both human. Growing up, my dad was the absolute best dad that he could be, and I was the best daughter that I could be; that doesn’t mean we were perfect, it means we both still need the grace, love, forgiveness, and truth that comes from Jesus and that flows out through us as we walk closer with Him.
Sometimes, making decisions with God and walking in obedience to His commands can feel like risky business. It can also often look worse before it looks better. We might start to ask questions like:
God, why did you put me in this situation?
God, how is any of this for my good?
God, why would you have me go through this dry, seemingly lifeless season?
And the truth is, God’s not afraid of your questions—you can take them to Him. But if there’s anything I want you pull from this testimony, it’s this:
You can trust God’s character even when you don’t like His methods.
If He tells you to leave behind a life you once knew, to follow Him into something that looks unclear and maybe even leads to feeling a sense of lack — you can trust that He is Jehovah Jireh — The Lord who provides (Genesis 22:14) and you can put your hope in what Jesus promised to those who experience loss for the sake of Christ:
Mark 10:29-30
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundred times more, now at this time — houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions — and eternal life in the age to come.
If He tells you to have a confrontational conversation in love, that feels like it might blow up in your face — you can trust that He is Jehovah Rapha — The Lord who heals (Exodus 15:26) and you can remember what happens for those who love Him, no matter the circumstance:
Romans 8:28
28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
It may not all look the way we would like it to, but we can trust this fact:
Isaiah 55:9
9 “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
A part of being surrendered is to trust God, and to walk in His instructions even if doesn’t make to us. When He has our full surrender, we can trust that He will do exceedingly, abundantly, and above all that we could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).
In one month, God showed up exponentially in my life. I received financial breakthrough, deep emotional healing for both me and my family, as well as vision and instruction for the next plans for my life that will launch purpose and destiny, not just for me, but for others as well. As I walked, the provision came. As we walk, the path becomes clear. As we walk.
So, the question I’ll leave you with is the same idea I started with:
What do you think God could do for you with just 1 month and your YES?
If there is something you have been delaying being obedient to God in, this is your encouragement to say YES and to find out what lies on the other side of your obedience!
It’s time to step into your purpose and access the fullness of the inheritance that the Lord is waiting to bless you with! Take the first step, and let Him meet you as you go.
With Love,
Keliz
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