Is Surviving the Wilderness Different for Women?
By Cathie Ostapchuk
I was on a webinar today with Rise In Strength, a global community of female leaders, listening to Beth Allison Barr (author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood) and Chinyere “Chinu” McDonald (Author of Unmaking Mary: Shattering the Myth of Perfect Motherhood - reflect on a compelling question:
Is surviving the wilderness any different for women?
One line from Chine stayed with me long after the webinar ended:
“God has a habit of showing up in places the world overlooks.”
What a stunning truth.
Because many women know something about wilderness.
Not always the dramatic wilderness of complete collapse, but the quieter wildernesses that can still feel just as harsh: seasons of waiting, rejection, loneliness, exhaustion, disappointment, invisibility, caregiving, heartbreak, leadership that costs more than expected, dreams delayed, prayers unanswered.
Sometimes wilderness can feel like punishment. We begin to wonder what we did wrong, why life feels harder than we imagined, why God seems quieter than before.
But Scripture tells a different story.
Think of Hagar.
A woman used, discarded, pregnant, abandoned, and sitting alone in the desert with no obvious future. If anyone looked overlooked, it was Hagar. Yet it was there - in the wilderness - that God found her.
Genesis 16 tells us that God met her, spoke to her, named her future, and Hagar became the first person in Scripture to give God a name:
El Roi — “the God who sees me.”
The wilderness did not mean God had abandoned her.
It became the place where she discovered who He really was.
That is often true for us too.
What can women learn in the wilderness?
Wilderness strips away false securities.
What we depended on, controlled, or trusted often falls away, forcing us to discover what is actually holding us.Wilderness reveals that God sees us.
Not our performance. Not our usefulness. Us.Wilderness forms strength we cannot build in comfort.
James reminds us that perseverance produces maturity (James 1:2–4). Hard places shape holy resilience.Wilderness clarifies what matters.
The noise quiets. The unnecessary falls away. We begin to hear God differently.Wilderness teaches us that survival is not the end goal—transformation is.
God does not simply bring us through. He forms something in us on the way.
The wilderness is rarely welcome.
But perhaps it is not where God overlooks us.
Perhaps it is where He meets us most tenderly.
Because God has always had a habit of showing up in places the world overlooks.
And sometimes, in those very places, He is preparing women not simply to survive—but to live well and lead whole.