Seven Years of Yes: Laboring in the Harvest with Healing and Triumph

Labor Day Weekend 2025

This Labor Day weekend marks seven years since I was ordained as an Evangelist—a sacred milestone of saying “yes” to God’s call, even when the field seemed too vast and the harvest too heavy. Over these years, I’ve discovered that triumphant living isn’t a denial of suffering but a commitment to rising in faith and serving others through both proclamation and presence.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.”—Luke 10:2

Through Restoring the Remnant and The Traumatology Center, I’ve walked alongside survivors of trauma, guiding them from paralysis to purpose. I’ve witnessed God turn every wound into a window for His glory—every lament into testimony. Yet one story has shaped my trajectory more than any other: the encounter at Jacob’s well.

From Stigma to Significance: The Woman at the Well

In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman carrying generations of buckets—buckets of rejection, shame, and unmet thirst. Socially ostracized and spiritually parched, her life had been defined by stigma. But when Jesus offers her “living water,” He transforms her identity. She leaves behind her jar—her burden—and runs to testify in her community. In that moment, her shame becomes her sermon.

This encounter models our work in trauma healing evangelism:

• Naming the wound: Jesus doesn’t ignore her pain; He acknowledges it (“Go, call your husband…”).

  
  

• Offering new identity: He invites her to drink of God’s eternal wellspring, reframing her story from brokenness to belonging.

  
  

• Empowering testimony: She becomes the first evangelist to Samaria, her own healing birthing a revival.

  
  

Seven Years of “Yes” and Living Water

Like the woman at the well, every person we serve at Restoring the Remnant is invited to leave behind their buckets—patterns of generational trauma, self-condemnation, and isolation. Our trauma-informed, Womanist framework echoes Christ’s approach:

1. Sacred Presence We create safe spaces where stories can be told without fear, just as Jesus sat beside the well in the heat of the day—vulnerable and unhurried.

   
   

2. Spirit-Led Restoration We guide participants into embodied practices—breath prayers, healing circles, scripture meditation—that pour out living water into parched souls.

   
   

3. Commissioned Transformation Every healed heart becomes a laborer in the harvest, testifying to God’s goodness and bringing living water to others.

   
   

Looking Ahead

As I celebrate this seven-year milestone, I recommit to that first “yes”—to labor for every remnant soul, to preach a gospel that heals, and to embody the hope of resurrection. May our cups overflow, and may we lead countless others to cast down their buckets and run with joy into a life of purpose.

Here’s to many more years of “yes,” of buckets released, and of communities restored.

Antara Rashida is the founder of Restoring the Remnant and The Traumatology Center, where faith, theological imagination, and trauma-informed care converge to equip laborers for God’s harvest.