Loading blog content, please wait...
By OK Tease Co.
The Prayer You Prayed That Still Hasn't Been Answered Yet You said the words. Maybe out loud in the car with the radio off, maybe in your head at two in...
You said the words. Maybe out loud in the car with the radio off, maybe in your head at two in the morning when the house finally went still. You asked for the thing. And then you waited. And it did not come. Not that week, not that month, and here you are, still asking, wondering if it went anywhere at all.
I know that feeling better than I want to admit. The waiting is its own kind of heavy. Heavier sometimes than whatever it was you were praying about in the first place.
Here is what nobody tells you about praying through a hard season. The hardest part is not the asking. It is the quiet afterward, when nothing changes and you start to wonder if you got skipped over. If everyone else's life is moving and yours is stuck on pause.
I have been in that exact spot. Single mom, two kids, a whole lot of asking God for something to shift, and a whole lot of mornings where nothing had. You start doing the math on it. How long you have been waiting. How much longer you can stand it. And the story your tired brain wants to tell you is that the silence means the answer is no, or worse, that nobody heard you at all.
That story is a liar. I do not say that to be cute about it. I say it because I have watched the timing prove it wrong in my own life more times than I can count.
The version of faith I actually live is not the tidy one. It is not everything happens for a reason said with a soft little smile while your whole world feels unfair. I hate that version. It skips right past how hard it is.
The real version is messier. It is trusting God's process even when it seems flat out unfair. Even when you cannot see the reason and you are not sure you ever will. You keep going anyway. Not because you have figured it out, but because you have decided that your ability to see the whole plan was never the requirement.
That is the part that changed things for me. I stopped needing to understand the timeline. Some of the prayers I prayed years ago got answered in ways I never could have scripted, and I only understood why they were slow once I was standing on the other side of them looking back. At the time it felt like being ignored. Turns out it was being set up.
Waiting does not mean sitting still. This is where I want to be honest with you, because there is a difference between waiting on God and waiting for God to do the whole thing for you.
While you are in the middle of the unanswered part, you still have a body to move, a day to show up for, kids who are watching how you carry it. That last one matters more than almost anything. My kids saw me go through the depths of it. They saw me lace up and go for a walk when I did not feel like it, saw me keep showing up when the answer had not come. They were witnesses to the whole thing. And when I came out above it, they had a front row seat to that too. That is what paves the way for them.
Movement was a huge part of how I held the line during the long waits. Not because it fixed anything on its own, but because taking care of the one body I get gave my head somewhere to go. It is a stress reliever first and everything else second. When you are strong enough to carry what you are carrying, the waiting stops crushing you the same way. If you are curious about how much even light, regular movement does for your stress and your head, the CDC's overview of the benefits of physical activity lays it out plainly.
None of that is me telling you the answer will come the second you start moving. I am telling you that you do not have to stand frozen at the door while you wait. You can be building yourself the whole time.
This is the one I resisted the longest. Sometimes the prayer gets answered and it does not look anything like what you ordered.
I asked for my life to get easier. What I got instead was strength I did not know I had, and a completely different life on the other side of a season I would not wish on anyone. A single mom with two kids does not usually picture where I ended up. Life turned around for me, but here is the thing I need you to hear: it turned the minute I started turning it around for myself. The two happened together. The answer and the effort were never separate.
You might be praying for a door to open when what is actually being built in you is the strength to walk through a different one entirely. That is not a consolation prize. That is often the real answer, wearing clothes you did not recognize at first.
If you take one thing from me, take this. The prayer you prayed is not lost. You are not at the back of some line. The waiting is not proof of anything except that you are in the part of the story that has not finished yet.
Women were built for exactly this. We do not get to step back. We keep going as moms, as daughters, as the ones holding it all up, and we come back stronger every single time. You are stronger than the wait. You are stronger than the silence. And you are far stronger than the story trying to tell you the answer is not coming.
Keep asking. Keep moving. Keep showing up for yourself on the days it is hardest. The answer is not a no. It is a not yet, and not yet is a place you can absolutely rise from.
You've got this. I mean it.