Samson Was My Story Too
What a conversation with my son taught me about survival, strength, and what God does when the enemy thinks he won.
By Brittany Davenport-Jeffcoat | Beyond Survival Mode™
My son moved back in with us recently. And honestly, having him home has been one of the unexpected gifts of this season — because conversations happen. Real ones. The kind that sneak up on you when you're just existing together and suddenly something gets said that cracks everything open.
We were talking about Samson.
Not in a formal Bible study kind of way. Just two people who love God talking about a story they both knew — and somewhere in the middle of that conversation, I heard something I had never heard before.
Samson's story is my story.
And if you've been following this page for any amount of time, I think it might be yours too.
"What the enemy meant for evil, God used for good. Every single time."
The Strength He Was Born With
Samson was not an ordinary man. Before he was even born, God had already set him apart. The angel told his mother — this child will be a Nazirite. He will begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. His calling was not something he earned. It was something he was born into.
I think about that a lot in the context of my own story.
I was born with gifts. Real ones. A psychology scholarship at an age when most people don't even know what they want. A music scholarship I turned down because I didn't trust the dream. An ability to see people, to build systems, to communicate in ways that connect — gifts I did not manufacture. Gifts that were placed in me before I had the language for them.
Like Samson, the calling was there before I was ready for it.
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart."
— Jeremiah 1:5 (NIV)
When He Laid Down with the Wrong Thing
Here is where the story gets uncomfortably honest.
Samson's downfall came from Delilah. He knew she was working against him. He watched her try to strip his power three separate times. And he still stayed. Still trusted. Still told her what she wanted to know.
The text says she pestered him daily until he was tired to death — and then he told her everything.
I was not sleeping with the enemy the way Samson was. But I was young. And I was doing things I knew in my spirit I should not have been doing. Making choices that the woman I was called to be would never have made — not out of malice, but out of immaturity and the kind of blindness that comes before you really know yourself.
And those choices had consequences.
Not as punishment. But as the natural weight of walking outside of your calling before you have the foundation to carry it.
"She kept nagging him day after day until he was sick to death of it. So he told her everything."
— Judges 16:16-17 (NLT)
When His Hair Was Shaved — When My Options Ran Out
When Delilah finally extracted Samson's secret, she did not cut his hair herself. She had a man come and shave his seven braids while Samson slept in her lap. She didn’t need the razor. She just needed the access. And when Samson woke up, he didn’t know his strength had left him. He rose thinking he was the same man who had laid down. He didn’t feel the absence right away.
That is one of the most devastating details in the entire story.
Because I know that feeling.
When I became a mother young — when I lost my son's father before he was even born — I didn't realize immediately what I had lost access to. I just kept moving. Kept surviving. Kept doing what needed to be done.
But slowly, the gifts that I knew God had placed in me stopped working the way they were supposed to. Not because they were gone. But because I was bound. Survival mode had me captured — financially, emotionally, spiritually — and I could not see the horizon from where I was standing.
The Philistines seized Samson, gouged out his eyes, and bound him in bronze shackles.
Being a young single mother in survival mode did the same thing to me.
Not maliciously. Not permanently. But really.
I had no sight. I could not see who I was becoming. I could not see past the next bill, the next crisis, the next season of just getting through. The things I was gifted to do — create, communicate, connect, build — were still in me. They just could not move freely inside a life structured entirely around survival.
"Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They took him down to Gaza and bound him in bronze shackles."
— Judges 16:21 (NLT)
But Then — the Hair Started Growing Back
This is the part of the story that the enemy always forgets to account for.
The Philistines thought they had won. They threw Samson in prison, put him to work, made a spectacle of him. They celebrated. They brought him out at their parties to mock what God had once anointed.
And the whole time they were celebrating —
His hair was growing back.
Quietly. In the dark. Inside the prison. While nobody was watching and nobody was celebrating him and the circumstances looked like permanent defeat.
That is what God was doing in my survival season.
While I was just trying to make it through — He was growing something back.
My relationship with Him deepened in ways it never could have in comfort. My discernment sharpened. My capacity for empathy expanded because I had lived inside pain long enough to understand it from the inside. My gifts — the ones that survival had muted — were being refined, not removed.
I just couldn't see it yet.
But God could.
"But before long, his hair began to grow back."
— Judges 16:22 (NLT)
"The enemy was celebrating. God was growing it back. Quietly. In the dark. While nobody was watching."
The Return of Strength — Greater Than Before
At the end of Samson's story, the Philistines brought him out to perform for them at a great celebration. Three thousand people watching. The leaders of their nation present. And Samson, blind and bound, asked to be led to the pillars.
He prayed one final prayer. He asked God to remember him. To strengthen him one more time.
And the Bible says he pushed with all his strength. And the temple fell. And in his death he killed more enemies than he had killed in his entire life.
The return was greater than the beginning.
I think about that when I think about what God is doing with Beyond Survival Mode™.
My gifts are not the same as they were before survival mode. They are amplified. The psychology I studied, the grief I processed, the endometriosis I manage, the house fire I survived, the income I lost and rebuilt, the years of being bound — all of it became fuel for something that could not have been built from a comfortable place.
You cannot teach what you have not lived.
And I have lived every single pillar of this framework.
"Then Samson prayed to the Lord, 'Sovereign Lord, remember me again. O God, please strengthen me just one more time.'"
— Judges 16:28 (NLT)
Where Samson's Story Meets the BSM Framework
This is not just a personal parallel. It is a framework parallel. And I want to name it clearly because I know there are women reading this who need to see their own story in Samson's.
PILLAR 1 — SURVIVAL MODE AWARENESS
Samson didn't know his strength had left him until he tried to use it.
Survival mode is the same — it often takes something breaking before we realize
we have been running on empty for a long time.
PILLAR 2 — DEFERRED IDENTITY
Samson was born with a calling he never fully stepped into cleanly.
His identity as a deliverer was always there — but it was deferred by his choices,
his blindness, and the season of captivity. Sound familiar?
PILLAR 3 — GRIEF OF THE UNLIVED SELF
Samson in prison, grinding at the mill — that is the image of a man grieving
who he was supposed to be. Eyes gone. Options limited. The unlived calling
sitting alongside him in the dark.
PILLAR 6 — SUSTAINABLE EXPANSION
The hair grew back slowly. Not overnight. Not dramatically.
Restoration and expansion in God's economy is rarely instant.
It grows in the dark, in the quiet, while the enemy is busy celebrating.
PILLAR 7 — STEWARDSHIP OF SELF
Samson's final act was the greatest act of stewardship in his story —
he used everything that remained. Every bit of what had been restored.
Stewardship is not about perfection. It is about using what God grew back.
To the Woman Reading This
Your survival season was not your ending.
The enemy thought he had you in prison. Thought the grinding was permanent. Thought the blindness meant you would never see what you were built for.
But your hair has been growing back this whole time.
In the quiet. In the dark. In the season that looked like nothing was happening.
God has been restoring what survival muted. Amplifying what captivity tried to silence. And preparing you for a return that is greater than what you walked in with.
The calling is still on you.
The strength is coming back.
Stand up on your feet. 🦋
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
— Romans 8:28 (NIV)
She was not lost. She was preserved. And her hair has been growing back this whole time.
READY TO GO DEEPER?
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