Recently we did a podcast episode talking about toxic environments, discernment, and the challenge of recognizing unhealthy patterns when you're living inside them.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch that episode yet, you can watch it here!

But while the podcast focused largely on identifying those patterns externally, I want this Oasis series to explore something different.

What happens inside us while we're living through them?

Over the next four issues, we'll reflect on the internal experience of difficult environments—the ways they shape us, challenge us, diminish us, and sometimes reveal things we didn't know were there.

We'll explore the difference between refinement and erosion, how to remain whole when you can't leave immediately, the tension between faithfulness and self-abandonment, and what healing can look like after you've finally stepped away.

Today, I want to begin with a question I've been carrying for a while:

How do we know whether an environment is refining us or slowly eroding us?

For almost 4 years, I worked in what many people would have described as a “Christian environment,” even though it was trade work.

When I first interviewed for the position in 2022, much of the conversation centered around discipleship. There was a vision of helping people coming out of addiction find healing, support, and spiritual growth. It was a mission I believed in deeply, and part of what drew me to the role in the first place.

The organization was owned and led by people who professed faith in Christ. They used the language of faith regularly.

And yet, it eventually became one of the most unhealthy toxic environments I've ever experienced. That reality was confusing for me at first.

Because when an environment carries the language of faith—and when you genuinely believe in the mission, or at least what you are told is their mission—it can be difficult to recognize when something isn't right. We expect Christian spaces to reflect the character of Christ. So when they don't, we often question our own perceptions before questioning the environment itself.

For a long time, I wrestled with whether what I was experiencing was simply refinement—a difficult season God was using to shape me—or whether something else was happening.

After all, growth a lot of times can be uncomfortable. Formation often involves pressure. Maturity is usually forged in places we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves. So how was I supposed to know the difference?

How could I tell whether this environment was strengthening something within me or slowly wearing something away? Looking back now, I think that's one of the hardest questions many of us face.

Not just in workplaces, but in relationships, churches, friendships, families, and communities. Because not every difficult place is harmful. And not every harmful place looks harmful at first.

Some environments refine us. Others slowly erode us. The challenge is learning to discern the difference.

One of the things I've come to realize is that refinement and erosion often feel surprisingly similar at first. Both involve discomfort. Both involve pressure. Both require endurance. Both can leave us tired at the end of the day.

That's what makes discernment so difficult. For a long time, I assumed that if something was hard, it must be helping me grow. And sometimes that's true.

Growth often asks something from us. It stretches us. Exposes weaknesses. Invites us into deeper dependence on God.

But difficulty alone isn't enough to tell us what an environment is producing. Over time, I began noticing things in myself that didn't feel like growth.

I was second-guessing my instincts more than usual. I found myself carrying a low-level tension that never seemed to leave. Conversations that should have been simple felt exhausting. I was constantly trying to make sense of contradictions between what was being said and what was actually happening.

Slowly, what felt unhealthy started to feel normal. And what should have felt normal started to feel distant.

Looking back, I think one of the clearest signs of erosion was that I became increasingly disconnected from myself. Not in some dramatic way. Just little compromises. Little moments of silence. Little decisions to ignore what I knew was true because confronting it felt too costly. When I finally found my voice to speak up about abuse and injustice, actually confronting it brought it’s own set of challenges (more on this in a later issue).

Refinement may challenge us, but it ultimately moves us toward greater wholeness. Erosion slowly fragments us.

Refinement strengthens integrity. Erosion pressures us to compromise it.

Refinement creates greater freedom. Erosion often leaves us feeling trapped.

The fruit may not be obvious at first. But eventually every environment leaves fingerprints on our souls.And one of the most important questions we can ask is:

What kind of fingerprints is this leaving on me?

Take a few moments this week and sit with these questions:

These aren’t questions to answer quickly.

They’re invitations to pay attention.

Discernment often begins not with certainty, but with awareness.

And sometimes simply naming what is happening is the first step toward healing.

There’s something about this song that feels connected to this week’s reflection.

Not because it answers the question of discernment, but because it names a feeling many of us try to ignore - weariness. This song has helped me through a lot of tough spots. When they originally released this song, they had radio stations tell them they would remove the song if the artist didn’t make it more hopeful. The artist refused, and people have connected with the song since then because of its raw honesty in how we feel sometimes as humans.

In the middle of toxic environments, we search for hope. We sometimes find ourselves asking God, “let me see redemption win, let me know the struggle ends.” Sometimes we assume that if we’re exhausted, discouraged, or emotionally drained, we simply need to try harder.

But there are moments when weariness becomes an invitation to pay attention. To ask why. To notice what has been happening beneath the surface. To consider whether what we’re experiencing is the normal weight of growth - or the slow erosion of something deeper.

One of the first clues that an environment was affecting me more than I realized wasn’t anger. It wasn’t clarity. it was weariness. The kind that slowly settles into your soul before you fully understand where it’s coming from.

Enjoy this week’s On Repeat!

In Christ,
Ben