Unanswered.

Unanswered prayers . . . a topic all too familiar and frustrating.

The topic that when brought up in conversation or sermon, can make even the most solid believer hang their head for a second with desperate specifics at the forefront of their mind. It’s a topic that I guarantee affects every single one of us because we all have at least one prayer we’re still waiting on.

Among the always present, “please save so and so” prayers, I’m currently facing three, at times perspective engulfing unanswered prayers. Three prayers that I continually present through tired and petitioning lips, countless times a day. Yet, instead of answers, God just keeps wrapping my soul in His sufficient grace while He places the stepping stools of growth in my way during this in between time.

The latest stepping stool that I’ve found myself in front of is one that was honestly, a little brutal to tackle. It confronted a hidden corner of my heart that I didn’t even know was there and as God lifted it to the surface, it stung a little; even a lot.

. . . 

I had a prayer, an unfathomable desired prayer that I fervently prayed for, for twelve years but the answer ended in a no.

From age three through to fifteen, though it would have had to of been a sea splitting miracle at that point, I can remember praying for a sibling; just one and I didn’t care what kind I got, I just craved to have a sibling.

I watched every one of my classmates receive even several siblings through school years together.

I went to so many families and friends’ hospital rooms to visit new little lives.

I even got to be the person who took church kids to meet their new baby sisters for the first time.

In each of those instances, my heart burned with sadness like nothing I can describe; watching everyone around me get the one thing I would have given up everything to have. And nothing stung more than when posed with the question: how many brothers or sisters do you have?  

I prayed incessantly. With all of my little mustard seed faith, I would pray every single time I left our house, that when we pulled back in, someone would have left a little bundle in a basket on the front steps. And I promise you, I believed with all my being that God could and would do it. But He never did.

After time and only more no’s, my family moved on and life as it was continued. Eventually, even I moved on but not without packing the unrequited years fueled with bitterness at the very top of a mental suitcase that I started carrying with me.

Over the following years, every time a new season was met with an urgent need, I translated my resentment into ammo directed at God to remind Him of that unanswered longing that I would bargain to forget, as long as He would miraculously and swiftly answer my new present request. For years I held my Savior on an IOU charge and I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. It became so natural and the basic first step to any prayer time.

In these past weeks, with very real, in-limbo prayers in front of me, God gentle tugged at this hidden habit until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Though the initial discovery was cringe worthy, with such grace, God began to hand me little pieces of truth to pull my raw heart closer to His.

Months ago, I had written a post all about waiting but over time and with growing needs, the hope of waiting learned last spring got blurred over. Now again, I’m reminded that if God is asking you to wait, that is the perfect plan. Waiting is not punishment; it is not Jesus’ displeasure in you or something to be shameful of. If you are in a season of waiting and of unanswered prayers, then that is the perfect place for you to be. And when the answers do come, God’s glory will be magnified infinitely more.

The reality of living in this fallen world while having an all knowing Savior, is that our desired yeses and our plans to avoid pain are not aligned with God’s faultless timeline. Though, this bad news is met with the best news: when we arrive at “no’s” or not “yet’s”, we have every right to cling endlessly to God and to petition what’s on our hearts during any second of the day.

But, we have no right to wave around our “back pocket bitterness” to try and get what we feel we deserve.

And though that itch to claim my perceived owing does still sneak up, I choose to remember that I’m the sinner. I’m the one who hurts God on the daily with my humanness. I’m the one who deserves not a speck of His love, but who still freely received His life in place of what should have been dooming death.

Maybe this post is simply to sort out my own thoughts or maybe you can fully relate. If you can, I invite you to set foot on this steep stepping stool of learning with me and trustingly walk into the charge that comes with it.

With weary hands waiting to catch answers, God is asking me to abandon my “what if’s” and my “remember when’s”. He is asking me to decidedly keep going in the purpose He has for me. Even if that means never knowing what the exact purpose for a specific season is on this side of time, it radiates with purpose from heaven’s vantage point. My job is to obey in the now and to wait well.

I can keep holding to hope because my God is indescribably good. In grace and in His time, He will answer every prayer. Not because He owes me anything and not because I wave my open-ended wants at Him in protective pain, but simply because He Is Good. I can keep fighting through these days of waiting, even though the doubt can be relentless, because I have a hope in the truth that my God is endlessly gracious. And somehow by switching to the mindset that answered prayers come based on God’s pure kindness as opposed to my own selfish deductions makes this pursuit seem a whole lot sweeter.

“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end-it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:3