unanswered prayer

i have been living my life in survival mode without intending to,
living in a fear-based response to my circumstance.

and by that i mean that i have not wanted to confront
and face the reality of my unanswered prayer.

… the prayer to bear life.
… the prayer for fruit in the womb.

i avoid acknowledging, accepting this unanswered prayer,
because i am afraid of my own emotion and pain.

the grief and lamentation feels like torture.
the attempts at hope feel like self-harm.

the more that i do confront this unanswered prayer,
the more that i can’t help but reckon with the “why”:

… why is God not answering this prayer?
… why is God not allowing me to fall pregnant?
… why is Jane Doe able to conceive, and not me?

the more i wrestle with the “why”, the more afraid i become,
because doubts and fears arise within within me.

… i fear that God is not going to answer the desire of my heart.
… i question whether God is a God of His promises.
… i doubt God’s faithfulness, God’s provision, God’s timing.

my unanswered prayer has been a vicious cycle
that has led to flip-flopping of my faith, my trust.

i end up tip-toeing my way through prayer,
because i feel like a broken record.

i don’t want to hear Him speak into my situation
in fear that it will be another “no” or “not yet”.

and so i end up in an avoidant state with God,
ignoring, hiding, barricading parts of myself from Him,
because i am afraid that i am going to get hurt.

i offer Him liquid prayers from a wellspring
within that is running dry and nearing empty.

i don’t want God to minister to me, because i am afraid
that He isn’t going to answer my heart’s longings.

this is a really tricky place to be, because there
is the constant wrestling, flip-flopping of the heart.

one week, i hold onto His promises, full of faith that i will be able to conceive a child,
standing on His word and His faithfulness towards His people throughout all time.
then the very next week, i am an absolute wrecking ball of grief and confusion.

my own brokenness has truly come to the surface in this pattern of my heart.

so today i am going to bring you on the journey of understanding
this patten, and of untangling the doubts and fears within me.

side note: this post is an extension of an earlier post on my season of darkness, because
a lot of what God was stirring in me then, He has still been tending to. this is the start of
several blogs where i will be sharing a deeper journey that has involved deconstructing
some of my own false beliefs, and what God has gently revealed and exposed in my heart.

living on a prayer

it’s coming up to two years of infertility
i truly can’t explain just how painful and
tumultuous this season has been.

twenty three months. nearly 700 days.
of living on a(n) (unanswered) prayer.

i know this is just a number and it may or may not seem
like that long to some. but the number does not
reflect each hour, each day, each week, each month
of barren waiting, empty promises, unanswered cries.

it is hard to articulate the gravity of this kind of waiting season
and what it actually looks like to spend 700 days waiting.

this is not a passive kind of waiting, it is active. it is a lot of
gruelling hours spent trying, monitoring, attending fertility
appointments, taking blood tests and medications, seeing
medical professionals, questioning your choices, making
lifecycle swaps for low-toxicity alternatives. the list goes on.

AMH tests, sperm tests, prenatal supplements, LH tests,
progesterone tests, oestrogen tests, pregnancy tests.

we have not spent the last two years in an accepting state of
“if it happens it happens”. no. we have been trying to make it happen.
but every month have failed, and every test has been negative.

this has meant a lot of time in limbo land. a lot of financial investment
with no return. a lot of physical, mental and emotional fatigue.

and surprisingly, a lot of spiritual fatigue, because this waiting
season has led to unhealthy patterns in my relationship with God.

on one hand, this season has made me spiritually stronger, more
reliant on God’s word and promises and presence (ref: this blog).

but at the same time, there has been that tension within myself, that
denial and avoidance of God, in fear that God is not a God of His word.

i have been aware of this tension in myself, and i’ve avoided writing
in detail about my fertility journey since my endometriosis surgery.

a part of the tension of this season has been processing empty promises:

a lot of people say you will be the most fertile in the first few months
post endometriosis removal surgery, that it is easier to fall pregnant (not true).

a priest told me in March that in July i would conceive (not true).

a lot of people have told me that when we “stop trying” we will fall pregnant (not true).

a lot of people who have struggled with conceiving will provide shopping lists
of what worked for them, as though those are the “secret key” to fertility (not true).

as humans, we love to help others by offering solutions, stories. but unless
the recipient has asked for these, they’re often more harmful than helpful.

for me, it has been very harmful and heartbreaking, because each time i have
allowed myself to get my hopes up, i get put through the ringer of disappointment.

i do all the things i’ve been told or suggested to do. i try all the methods.

… but nothing works.
… so i feel like a failure.

it’s like i am being given a checklist of all the things i need to do to be fertility compliant.
if i don’t do them, i fear that my failure to adopt XYZ suggestion is the reason why we are
not able to fall pregnant. it’s a system and mindset fraught with behavioural distress.

and in that distressed state, i surrender to God, asking for His provision, His deliverance.
but when He doesn’t provide or deliver, then the feeling of failure on my side is
compounded by the feeling that God has also failed me. it is a vicious cycle.

and this is what fuels the survival mode, the fear-based response.

what makes matters worse is witnessing other’s falling pregnant, birthing, or parenting.

i have been so emotionally distraught by all of the pregnancy announcements on my
social media feed this past year in particular. so many people i know, birthing life.
so many people i know, announcing pregnancy within their first year of being married.

for those struggling with fertility, it is just heartbreaking to see these stories. i know
i should be celebrating these announcements, experiencing joy at another’s joy.
but if i am honest, they only send daggers through my heart, leading to pain, not joy.

i cannot muster up joy for others, nor see God’s goodness toward them, without being confronted
by my lack of joy, my lack of a miracle, and the seeming absence of God’s goodness towards me.

i have even seen announcements from those who have struggled with infertility, who understand
the heartbreak, who have had their miracle babies. i know that they, to an extent, understand my pain.
but when i see their post, captioned “God is faithful“, instead of celebrating God’s character, i am
clouded by my circumstances, and cannot help but question why God has not been faithful toward me.

and in my distressed, tormented state,
my prayers to God start to become pleas:

why not me, Lord? why them?

i get angry at God. i get angry at those who have been blessed with their miracle babies.

i hear stories from my cousin-in-law, about her friend’s mother who is providing illicit drugs to her
teenage child and it makes my blood boil, my heart breaking to pieces, because i don’t understand
why someone who doesn’t guard their child’s heart and life is enabled to be a parent, and i am not.

i hear stories from a friend’s friends speaking of their traumatic births, and i cannot help but feel
an empty tugging in my belly, a wild reckoning, fear, untangling within me, intrusive thoughts
that i may not be able to birth a child, or that i may go through the torture of trying to conceive,
only to also be met with suffering in pregnancy, in birth, in child-rearing. there is no end to the fear.

i hear stories on a podcast of a single woman who decides to start fostering children, and who, after
five years, is able to adopt the children she fosters. and my imagination cannot protect me from wondering
whether i will be able to have children of my own, and i cannot seem to envision the alternatives.

i get so afraid and angry, in these vicious cycles. i really have to check myself.

i have to explore, probe: why am i afraid? why am i angry? why am i really affected by this?

and at the at the heart of it, i realise my faith is threatened, and i’m in denial, i’m grieving.

i am threatened in my beliefs on God’s blessings, because i have not received a miracle.
i am in denial of my reality, afraid that God is withholding this miracle, this desire from me.
i am mourning and grieving that what i have desired is not available to me, but available to others.

it has been very, very hard to reckon with. this kind of grief. this kind of emotion.

and so i have been avoidant towards God, scared to sit with the Scriptures;
afraid to receive an answer to my prayer, in case it is not the answer my soul desires.

as result, i have not been abiding; i have been hiding, denying, avoiding.

the pattern of our hearts surfaces in our patterns of behaviour.

i am good at these avoidant patterns of behaviour,
but my soul never lets me remain this way.

my soul longs to abide, not to hide.
my soul desires to rest in Him, not to avoid Him.

and so i get restless, i get agitated within myself when i am not living congruent to
God’s call on my life, His desire for me to pursue Him, and to abide in and with Him.

when i am not seeking Him, this is when i find
myself more afraid, more directionless. living
in survival-mode, the fear-based response.

there is the absence of joy, of peace, of patience.

there as a lack of fruit, because i am not abiding in
the true vine, who enables us to bear fruit [john 15].

Jesus specifically teaches us on bearing fruit:

“abide in me, and i in you. as the branch cannot
bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine,
neither can you, unless you abide in me.” [4]

this is the power of His presence, His with-ness.

the life i so desire to bear, the fruit of the womb that
i so long to carry, i cannot receive without abiding.

abiding is the beginning, middle, end of the journey,
it is the only response for every season under the sun.

avoidance is our Garden-of-Eden coping strategy, a distortion of
our true attachment with God, when He created us to be with Him.

the Enemy introduced us to fear, anger, shame – avoidant behaviours,
that are barriers to abiding. these are patterns that encourage us to
enter into a transactional, distant, fear-driven relationship with God.

but abiding is a command to remain in covenant with God, to dwell
with our heart’s first Love, to allow the pattern of our hearts, and
subsequently the pattern of our lives, to conform to the likeness of
Christ, and be transformed by eternal relationship with Love Himself.

what Jesus proceeds to say on abiding we have to destruct a little bit:

“if you abide in me, and my word abides in you,
ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” [7]

it would be easy to take this Scripture out of context, and use it as
an argument for God answering our prayers, giving us our desires.

but the danger of this kind of prayer, believing that if we ask
for what we wish, God will grant us our wishes, is the
transactional relationship that it creates with us and God.

what Jesus is actually suggesting in this passage, is not that
God is a vending machine for our desires. but rather, that when
we are abiding in Him, our desires start to align to His – our
hearts and minds, in His word, start to wish for what He wants,
for the things of His kingdom here on earth, for His glory, etc.

John Piper has a great response to this verse, when he was asked whether
Christians should ask in faith and boldly name and claim ‘whatever you wish,
and it will be done‘, and whether that is theologically sound and biblical.

Piper proceeds to qualify and contextualise this verse, and provides a helpful
framework for challenging and understanding this ‘name it and claim it’
theology. i want to address this theology more in future blogs, but for the
sake of this blog, let’s be clear: God is not a wish-fulfilment factory.

desperate for an answer

when faced with unanswered prayer, we have to be careful
not to use and abuse prayer and our relationship with God,
because He is not a genie in a bottle waiting to grant our wishes.

while i have been living on a prayer, desperate for an answer:
i cannot let my desire for a child be greater than my desire for God.

this has been the wrestling, the tension of this season. often it does
not seem that this season has made me spiritually stronger. only mentally,
emotionally, physically distraught. the ends of my self. the emptying of all hope.

so many times, i have thought that i cannot keep going.
i have given up hope, given up faith, given up.

it has been a cycle of despair, met with repentance.

i return to hoping, to reclaiming that belief in who God is.
but the cycle means that each time i open myself up to hope,
my hope is destroyed, crushed, disappointed again and again.

i give up, and then, get my hopes up. and it’s torture.

i have been in survival mode because of this pattern,
not coping with the reality and pain of this waiting season.

and in my fear, in my desperation, i have acknowledged
within myself that i have been yearning for a reason.

i have craved a “why” for this season of barrenness, infertility.
i have desperately needed an “answer” to my prayer to conceive.

if i have a reason, a sign, for why God has made me wait, then i
wouldn’t have to question the depths of myself, and what i’m really afraid of:

i am afraid that God is not a God of His word, of His promises.
i am afraid that He is not sovereign, that He is not in control.

i’m not seeing the evidence of His faithfulness in my life.
i see examples from others of His faithfulness towards them.
… but why isn’t He showing up for me?
… what if He isn’t going to give me a miracle?

it doesn’t make sense to me, by my own rationality. which is why i crave a “why”.

i cannot reconcile why He will not grant us this gift of bearing a child.
it aligns so closely to His Word, to His promises tracing back to Abraham.

i have so badly wanted there to be a reason why God is not answering my prayer,
because then it means that my faith and beliefs in who God is will not be tested.

because if there isn’t a why…. what does that say about God’s heart and character?

why would He give me a desire that He is not intending to fulfil?
does He want me to live a life of yearning, suffering?

is He trying to teach me a lesson, that i shouldn’t be
placing my desire in anything other than Him?

so i wrestle with the why, the what if’s, questioning God’s timing.
but really, i have been searching for my own answer to my prayer.

i have been wanting an answer as to why God is not answering…

confronted by this recently, i realised that instead of questioning God,
i needed to start questioning my underlying beliefs about God in this.

what false beliefs have worked their way into my theology?
what if i never understand the ‘why’? never receive a reason?

God has been gently nudging me, convicting me, that more often
than not, He will not reveal His sovereignty in the way i expect.

He may not always give us the “why”, or provide explanations.
we may not receive the clarity we crave, the answers we ache for.

when trying to understand God’s heart on this, and ironically, asking
why He may not always give us or want us to know the “why“, i turned
to how Jesus operated, and how he didn’t always provide clear responses,
often speaking in parables, not answering as people expected him to.

in Luke chapter 8 we read of a young woman who was healed by Jesus,
who we learn had not stopped bleeding for twelve years, and who had
spent all of her income on doctors, but despite this, nobody could heal her.

when she learns of Jesus, she knows that he is the only one who will be
able to heal her. she is the woman who touches Jesus in a crowd, and
immediately is healed, with Jesus perceiving that power had left him.

what strikes me in this story of healing is that the woman did not
get a reason, a why, an explanation for the twelve years of bleeding.

in my endometriosis journey so far, i feel like this woman, with excessive bleeding.
i have sought answers. from medical professionals. from emergency departments.
if i had not stopped bleeding for twelve years like this woman, i would want answers.

but she does not seek answers, she seeks healing. she seeks healing, and finds healing.

Jesus teaches us in Matthew 7 to “ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will
find; knock and the door will be opened to you. for everyone who asks receives;
the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” [7]

we must consider the application of this parable to prayer:

what are we seeking?

are we seeking answers to our prayers, or seeking first the kingdom of God?

note: Jesus taught them to seek first the kingdom in the previous chapter [Matthew 6:33]

we are not called to seek answers, but to seek first His kingdom.

so, what are we seeking?

in another story of healing, Jesus encounters a man who had been an invalid
for thirty-eight years. Jesus asks him, “do you want to be healed?”  [John 5:6]

it seems like an odd question. of course the man wants to be healed (!). but Jesus asks him, and
instead of replying “yes“, the man starts to give a reason as to why he has not been healed.

the man gives Jesus a checklist of excuses really, including why others have failed him.

isn’t this wild? the man is so focussed on why he cannot receive healing,
that when asked if he wants healing, he does not give an answer.

i see myself in this story. i have brought my fertility checklist to God and said
“look, see, i have done all that is asked of me to conceive, why am i not conceiving?”

of course God has not answered. and instead of an
answer, there is an ask: “do you want to be healed?

Jesus does not ask, “why are you not healed?”
“what is preventing you from being healed?”

yet the invalid man responds to these. and these are very human responses.

but Jesus is always trying to get to the heart of our desire:

do we want answers, or do we want healing?

Jesus often offers the latter, without the former.

it is not wrong to live on prayer, to offer prayer, but we cannot be so desperate for answers,
so focussed on why God is not answering our prayers, why God is not healing, providing,
or delivering us from sickness, suffering, and pain on this earth, that we miss Jesus’ invitation.

Jesus came that we might receive “sozo“, the Greek word that wraps up concepts of
God’s rescue mission, His salvation, deliverance, and healing all into one offering, one invitation.

so the question is not, why is God not answering our prayers, our hearts desires?
but: what do we truly want? do we want what Jesus is offering to us?

consider this story of Mother Theresa’s response
to a visiting volunteer to her ministry in Calcutta:

“what do you want me to pray for?” she asked.  he voiced the request that he
had borne thousands of miles from the United States: “pray that i have clarity.”

she said firmly, “no, i will not do that.”  when he asked her why, she said, “clarity is
the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” when Kavanaugh commented
that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said,
“i have never had clarity; what i have always had is trust. so i will pray that you trust God.”“

if we want answers, clarity, reasons, more that we want God,
we need to take an honest health-check of our prayer life.

instead of praying for answers and clarity, pray for deeper trust and faith.

living on the Word

uncovering, untangling our wants and desires,
and submitting them to God’s will is hard. our
human will wrestles for control, for authorship.

we want to dictate how the story of our lives will go, the
desires God will fulfil in our lives, the plan He has for us…

but God is the sovereign author of all our stories, and
He fights for our desires, our hearts, our longings.

but so much competes for our attachment, our attention. that we
forget that He is for us. He is a good Father. who gives good gifts.

it is the Enemy who loves to plant seeds of doubt,
the Garden-of-Eden script “did God really say….”

i see how he has tempted me to question
“is God really faithful?” “is God really good?”

the Enemy loves to steal, kill and destroy.
the Enemy loves to tempt us to question God.

we see these patterns of behaviour in the Scriptures.

Eve tempted to question what God said and meant.
Jesus tempted in the wilderness by Satan.

there is a significance to the wilderness, for when
we are in barren places, we are more acutely
aware of our physical needs and wants. water, food.

the Enemy loves us to target us in the wilderness,
because that is when when we are most likely to question
God’s provision, God’s deliverance, God’s promises.

but in the temptation of Jesus, we see God’s sovereignty,
even in the midst of the Enemy’s attack. it was not Satan
who drove Jesus to the wilderness. it was the Spirit. and
Jesus was not alone in the wilderness. we learn that angels
were ministering to Him. God was with him, for him.

the Enemy is prowling around, ready to devour. ready
to steal, kill, destroy. if we are not prepared, not armed
with Scripture, we can be tempted to question God.

i have been in a wilderness season, a barren place, where
in all honesty, i have not just been tempted to question God,
but i have questioned God, and in doing so, succumbed to fear,
instead of living in a faith-filled response to the Spirit of God.

how do we stand up to the Enemy’s schemes and tactics?
how do we fight against temptation, doubt, fear?

Scripture is how Jesus fought temptation in the wilderness.

to each temptation, Jesus responded by quoting Scripture.
we see this in Luke 4:4, 8, 12 where Jesus replies “it is written”.

but interestingly, we must not miss that that Satan also knows and
uses Scripture, but distorts it, as a temptation tactic and means to
test and question God’s word, and Jesus’ identity and authority [3, 9-10].

abiding in the Word of God, holding fast
to God’s promises, truth and character
is how we fight through temptation.

the Enemy will tempt us to question
God’s authority and sovereignty,
but we must contend for our faith,
we must stand on the word of God.

we can be emboldened, strengthened in a faith-based response to
our circumstances, instead of a fear-based response, because
of the Spirit of God. a Spirit not of fear, but of power, love, and a
sound mind. and as we learn in the Armour of God, the Sword
of the Spirit which we fight temptation with is the word of God.

we are livin’ on Scripture, livin’ by the Spirit.

Bon Jovi may sing about livin’ on a prayer, but
Jesus actually calls us to be livin’ on the Word.

that’s not to say we shouldn’t be livin’ on a prayer, because
prayer is powerful, but prayer is not the weapon we fight with.

we fight with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

so maybe it was misleading to label this post “Living on a Prayer”

… but this post has been a journey of discovering the misplaced
patterns and desires of my heart, that have had me living desperate
for an unanswered prayer, rather than desperate for God and His word.

so let us return to Him, abiding in Him and His word.

Xx

P.S. if you find yourself questioning God, don’t forget to question yourself,
and ask yourself honestly if there are any false beliefs or lies you have been
believing about who God is or about His sovereignty and reign over all things.

P.P.S. stay tuned for more deconstruction on some of the topics explored in
this post (the ‘name and claim’ theology, contending for the faith), coming soon!