Day 3: The Ground I Didn’t Want to Be

Genesis 1: 9-10 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

I wasn’t looking for a sermon that day. I was on Facebook — a platform I genuinely dislike, but I’d reinstalled it for Gee’s school updates and to sell off the things we’d decluttered. That’s it. That’s all I wanted from it.

And then I saw her post.

An old friend, celebrating a big career win — the kind of achievement the world hands out gold stars for. Something about the way she was talking about it caught me wrong, and before I even understood why, something sharp rose up in me.

Then, right behind it, before I could stop it: I could do that too.

And the second that thought finished forming, conviction hit. Not because wanting a career is wrong. Because I knew — even as I was thinking it — that what I felt wasn’t really about her, or her job. It was the ache of watching someone else hold something I used to have, and feeling like the ground under my own feet had gone dry.

I closed the app. And I cried.

I prayed, the way I’ve promised God I always will now — even the ugly, embarrassing thoughts, especially those. And then I told your papa what had happened, half-expecting him to comfort me and move on.

He didn’t. He told me the truth instead — but not the truth I expected.

“Chill,” he said. “I know she comes across a certain way. But we have to give grace, even for the things she doesn’t realize she’s carrying — because she won’t show that side on social media. You should feel sorry for her, honestly. She’s hustling because she has to. She’s carrying it all, dressed up as strength.”

Then, more gently, he turned it back to me. He reminded me that God blessed him so that I wouldn’t have to carry what she’s carrying. So I could actually start the thing God has been calling me toward this whole time. Not everyone gets that. Many women would want exactly what I already have.

As he said it, I could almost see God standing behind him — smiling, proud of His son.

That’s the ground I was standing on, Ladybugs — right before I understood what dry ground is actually for.

That night, I asked God the same question I’d been asking all through this Creation series: What’s in here for me? What do You want me to learn from this journey?

On Day 1, He named my darkness so I could tell it apart from Him. On Day 2, being named cost me something — it meant being set apart, and learning that being held up doesn’t mean the ache disappears. I thought that was the hardest part. I didn’t know yet that Day 3 would ask for the thing after obedience: not just being named, not just being held — but responding. Growing. Letting what He spoke over me actually become something.

I didn’t get an answer right away — not because He was silent, but because I think I already knew, and I didn’t want to sit still long enough to hear it again.

So I went back to Day 3. Genesis 1:9-13. God gathers the waters into one place, and dry ground appears. Scripture calls it Yabbashah.

That fascinated me. God didn’t name it that — Yabbashah was already the word for it, the word that existed for that kind of ground. But here’s what caught me: God was about to fill this earth with trees and grass and every living thing. He knew that. So why reveal the ground first as this — dry, withering, the same word Scripture uses for death — instead of just revealing it already fertile? Why start there?

That’s the question I sat with.

So I started tracing where else that word shows up. And every single time, the pattern is the same. Water parts. Dry ground appears. And then — without fail — new life follows.

In Genesis, it’s the ground itself, about to bring forth every living thing. In Exodus, it’s the sea floor Israel walks across to escape Egypt. In Joshua, it’s the Jordan riverbed, the last step before the Promised Land. In Jonah, it’s the shore he’s spit onto after running from God and nearly drowning in the process. Every time, dry ground isn’t the end of the story. It’s the ground where new life gets planted.

I was Yabbashah, Ladybugs. Watching a screenshot on a screen and feeling like everything I used to be had dried up and blown away. Useless. Behind. Wondering why God would call me to anything if He wasn’t going to show me the fruit yet.

Genesis 1:11-13 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

But here’s what I almost missed: God doesn’t leave the dry ground nameless. He doesn’t just reveal it and walk away. He calls it Eretz — and in Hebrew, a name isn’t always just what something is called. Sometimes it’s what something is for. Eretz wasn’t a label. It was a purpose, spoken over ground that, a moment before, only had a word for dying attached to it.

And Eretz didn’t stay dry ground pretending to be something else. It didn’t need to prove itself first. It simply responded — to the name, and then to the command that came with it: Let the earth sprout. That’s the order. Named, then commanded, then fruitful. Not the other way around.

Look at what that response produced. Grass. Trees. Seed within seed, fruit within fruit — an entire, breathing world, because dry ground answered to a name it hadn’t earned yet.

Here’s something I’ll only whisper for now, Ladybugs, because it deserves its own letter one day: Eretz’s name, written in the old pictograph script, carries three pictures — strength, a head that leads, a hand that takes hold. Even in the letters of its own name, God was already writing “authority” and “possession” into ground that, moments before, was just something dead and dry. Eretz was never going to stay a canvas for grass and trees. That was only the beginning of what it was named for. Someday I’ll show you how far that name goes.

That’s what my your papa was doing for me that night, even if neither of us called it that then. He wasn’t just comforting me. He was calling me by the name God had already spoken over me — reminding me that God didn’t strip away my career and leave me dry for nothing. He was clearing the water off to one side so He could speak my purpose over what was underneath. So I could hear my own name before I demanded to see my own fruit.

In this Creation process that God is taking me through, I am again blown away by the depth of His love for me — for us.

His every action, every word, every name He gives speaks of the love and His wonderful plans for us and how He looks at us.

He removes the chaos out of the way, gathers it to one side to reveal a dry ground. We are that dry ground. We are nothing, but He will pull us out of the depths because He sees what we can become and what we can produce.

Our frame was not hidden from Him. He knew us before we even had form, when we were woven together in the depths of the earth (Psalm 139).

And then He calls us by a new name — a name so different from what we are, but by how He sees us, by how we are redeemed (Isaiah 43:1)— by how He sees the beauty of His plans for us, His hope for us and our future (Jeremiah 29:11).

But it doesn’t stop there. He wants us to know His voice, obey His commands, and respond (John 10:27).

And oh! What beauty is there if we respond to His voice!