The betrayal didn’t arrive loudly.
It came wrapped in familiarity, laughter that lingered half a second too long, meetings that suddenly happened without him, decisions made “for the good of the team.” Nothing dramatic enough to protest. Nothing obvious enough to confront. Just enough to make him doubt his own perception.
That’s how Jake’s life began to shrink.
He noticed it first in small things. Emails he used to be copied on stopped coming. His name no longer appeared on proposals he had drafted. People he trained began supervising him. When he asked questions, answers came late, or not at all.
He told himself it was temporary.
He told himself he was imagining it.
He told himself integrity would speak for itself.
It didn’t. Not immediately.
Integrity often costs you first before it pays you back. And the cost is usually invisibility.
Jake hadn’t failed. He hadn’t compromised. He hadn’t fallen. But he had been quietly moved to the margins. And there’s a particular kind of pain in being overlooked while still present, watching others rise using the very ladders you built.
He didn’t rage.
He didn’t resign.
He stayed.
Not because he was strong, but because leaving felt like letting the story end too early.
What Jake didn’t realize was that he was following a pattern Joseph had lived through long ago.
When Joseph was lowered into the pit, Scripture records no resistance. No argument. No last appeal. Just a descent into darkness arranged by brothers who had grown tired of his dreams (Genesis 37:23-24). Later, falsely accused and imprisoned, Joseph learned what Jake was learning now: righteousness does not exempt you from isolation.
The pit doesn’t announce itself as preparation. It feels like erasure.
Joseph was forgotten by the cupbearer. Jake was forgotten by leadership. Different settings. Same silence.
But something happens to people who refuse to rot in obscurity.
Joseph learned to manage what was placed in his hands, no matter how small the scope. A household. A prison. Responsibilities no one celebrated. Jake did the same. He sharpened skills no one was watching. Solved problems that weren’t assigned to him. Became excellent where bitterness would have been easier.
Years passed.
Then systems failed.
The very leaders who sidelined Jake were exposed by their own shortcuts. Projects collapsed. Trust evaporated. Suddenly, Jake’s name resurfaced, not as a campaign, but as a solution.
Joseph stood before Pharaoh in a single day after years of confinement (Genesis 41:14). Jake didn’t experience a palace moment, but he stepped into influence that would have crushed the earlier version of him.
Because pits change people.
Joseph would later tell his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Not because betrayal was justified, but because purpose outruns intention.
Jake understood this in his own way. The delay had stripped him of illusions. The sidelining had cured him of entitlement. The silence had taught him to listen.
Here’s the truth most people never accept:
The pit is not a detour.
It’s a filter.
Some people leave too early.
Some become bitter and stall.
Some compromise to escape.
And some endure, and emerge carrying weight their former selves could not sustain.
The question isn’t whether you’ll encounter the pit.
It’s whether you’ll grow there, or despise it and miss what it came to give you.