Is God still good when our prayers aren't answered?

The other day I was driving home from work with the radio on lightly in the background. After managing a bunch of preschoolers all day, I was exhausted and dazed as I followed the familiar roads home. The host came on after the ending of a current hit, ready to share a listener's story of God's grace and love.

This listener was overwhelmed by God's grace and love, the host read, when after years of prayer, her sister was cancer free. "Amen", the host said over and over, then went on to reiterate God's goodness, his faithfulness.

As tired as I was, my head and my heart were now quite awake. What would that email have sounded like if, after years and years of prayer, her sister had passed away due to her cancer? Would she still have been overwhelmed by God's grace and love? Would God still be as good? As faithful?

This questioning was in no way a judgement of this woman and her joy. It was a question of whether or not prayer really changes things. Can we put that much weight on prayer? Does answered or unanswered prayers somehow prove God is listening? Do we need obviously "answered prayers" in order to believe that God is good even in the midst of this fallen world?

I have always struggled with the idea of prayer. As a little kid I got the message somehow that if I just asked God for something, I would receive it. This set me up for many years of feeling disappointment in God; questioning His goodness.

So what If we pray for something fervently, without ceasing, and God doesn't "answer our prayer"? What do we do with that?

First, I think we need to look at what prayer is. Is it kneeling by the bed as a child in a blue flowered nightgown? Is it face down on the bathroom linoleum, blinded by tears? Is it a rambling car conversation with the Almighty on the commute home? Is it a simple "thank you" when you walk away from an accident unscathed? Yes. It is all of these and then some.

Prayer is communication with God. It is a gift from our Savior who wants to have a relationship with us. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" {Matthew 11:28}. "Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise Him" {Psalm 33:1}.

Sometimes my prayer is a mantra that I repeat over and over on a day riddled with anxiety. Sometimes it's silence while watching the Master's masterpiece of a sunset over my house. Sometimes it's a call to action, a desperate plea for God to answer my request. Only sometimes are those call to action prayers "answered" in the way I would have liked them to be answered.

Maybe I am too busy waiting for my specific answer, that I am missing His divine and perfect answer.

 I also think we need to re-define what it means to have a prayer "answered'. For many years I took the "ask and you shall receive" approach to prayer. I ask and God grants my request, much like a genie. However, when I felt as if I wasn't receiving what I asked for (which was most of the time) I became angry and discouraged.

As a teenager, I prayed, almost exclusively, for freedom from debilitating anxiety. I was suffering greatly, and prayed until I was blue in the face, that God would take it away. I searched the Bible for answers, empathizing with Job, which fueled my anger at what I perceived to be God's silence.

As I have continued on this journey to peace in the midst of anxiety, my unanswered teenage prayers have become much more clear. While I was praying for my pain to disappear, God was using my pain to strengthen my faith, my empathy, my love, my character. He had bigger plans than my own. Answering my prayer would been incredibly debilitating in my journey to the heart of Christ.

God knows what he is doing. He really really does.

I will leave you with this devotional from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest:

Prayer is not a normal part of the life of the natural man. We hear it said that a person’s life will suffer if he doesn’t pray, but I question that. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer. When a person is born again from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve or nourish that life. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished. Our common ideas regarding prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.

“Ask, and you will receive…” (John 16:24). We complain before God, and sometimes we are apologetic or indifferent to Him, but we actually ask Him for very few things. Yet a child exhibits a magnificent boldness to ask! Our Lord said, “…unless you…become as little children…” (Matthew 18:3). Ask and God will do. Give Jesus Christ the opportunity and the room to work. The problem is that no one will ever do this until he is at his wits’ end. When a person is at his wits’ end, it no longer seems to be a cowardly thing to pray; in fact, it is the only way he can get in touch with the truth and the reality of God Himself. Be yourself before God and present Him with your problems— the very things that have brought you to your wits’ end. But as long as you think you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.

To say that “prayer changes things” is not as close to the truth as saying, “Prayer changes me and then I change things.” God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.

Admitting to the dark places

A few days back one of my sweet cousins texted me in panic. "Pray", she wrote, "My friend has a history of pain and depression and he's missing. They can't find him." I immediately responded that I would, even though God and I were having a little bit of a spat and I didn't feel like talking to Him (well I was spatting, God was doing whatever it is God does when I am being ridiculous).

Shortly after receiving the text, I was in my car on my way home from work; sunglasses on, breeze on my face, sweating hamstrings sticking to the leather seats of my RAV4. I was very aware of all of my senses; the fact that I was alive, experiencing so many things all around me. So many things in life are beautiful.

But sometimes life is too much. I think of my cousin's dear friend. Ive known that feeling all too well in my lifetime. Sometimes life is too much. Sometimes there seems like no way to escape the aches that settle deep within ourselves. The ache to run away is strong, urgent, unwavering. Sometimes it feels like there is no other option. 

For those of us who carry the burdens of the world like an infant at our chest, life is never easy. When we are not carrying our own burdens, we are limping with the weight of someone else's. We are overwhelmed with joys, and crushed with pains. We live life in extremes that both energize and unravel us. A gift that can be hard to navigate.

I cannot stop thinking about my cousin's friend. The loneliness he must feel navigating a world that doesn't see everything that he sees, or feel everything he feels. I know that loneliness, as many of us do. What if he knew that? What if he knew he isn't alone.

I love raw vulnerability. It's like water for my soul. But it is terrifying when it's your own raw vulnerability, your story out in the world for everyone to see, your heart strung out on the clothesline.

But this is important friends. We don't need to tidy up our lives, we need to bring them messy. Come as we are. 

Earlier today my cousin texted me that her friend had been found. He had checked himself into a hospital to get help for his depression. I don't even know him, but I am so proud of him. So proud of his rawness, his strength, his acceptance of who he is. "Tell him that he's not alone," I texted my cousin, "make sure he knows that he is not alone." 

sitting on the lost side of loss

Loss is excruciating.

Loss of life, loss of love, loss of job, loss of dreams.

Loss doubles us over, knocks us down, and sits on our hearts.

It follows us into every corner of our lives, every crevice of our hearts, never-ceasing, never resting.


It's not something that you fight. there's no winning such a battle.

It's something that is thrown at you with such force that you have no choice but to catch it.


A lot of people that I love very much are struggling with loss right now. And so, I too, am struggling as I mourn for them and with them. There are no magic words to heal or comfort,  no wand to wave it all away.

 I do believe there is something important for all of us in the midst of loss,  gifts of sorts that we can grab ahold of. We cannot always bear to look for them right away as we are trying so hard to just survive. But as the raw baby skin on our hearts begins to flesh over, we start to see the little gifts we received along the way.

Last night I lay in bed, surrounded by my bible, my journal, and two devotional books. I was looking for comfort, for answers, for peace. I cam across this quote, chicken scratched onto a tiny piece of paper, and pressed into the the pages of Job:

"Knowing that God suffers with us doesn't make our pain disappear or explain the enigma of suffering, but it does enable us to keep trusting God and believing in His goodness, even in the midst of the inexplicable. We may not be able to trace God's hand in what has happened, but we can still trust God's heart. And trusting God's heart encourages us to turn toward Him, instead of away from Him, to turn toward the cross and the road we must travel to get there."

{Stephen Seamands in Wounds that Heal}

I often feel abandoned by God in seasons of pain and loss. When I see others walk through it, I am angry at God for abandoning them. I forget over and over again that He is near us always and that nothing can separate us from His love. How quick I am to doubt His goodness, His sovereignty. I forget that He lived a life of alienation, carried His own cross, gasped for breath mounted to its splintering wood, wore a crown of thorns dripping with His own blood, drank vinegar from a nasty sponge. He suffered big time, more than the Bible could even describe.

He gets it.

So I sit here cross-legged on the rug, contemplating loss and the pain that it brings, I am humbled once again by how much I try to understand and how little I actually need to understand.

Though we may suffer, He is present. Though He may feel so far away, He is near.

giving power to our expectations-we need to stop.

I've been wondering for years now why I am so often caught off guard by things that happen in my life. How I am so often outraged when things don't go exactly as I had planned.

A few weeks ago I turned 25, a quarter of a century. When I opened my eyes to my birthday, I sat up in expectation of feeling a maturity and wisdom I had not known as a 24 year old. I rubbed my eyes, stretched, looked around me...nothing. Eric was still asleep, and feeling as if this mini birthday crisis did not concern him, I sat on the edge of the bed alone with my thoughts.

Many years ago 25 seemed so old. By twenty-five I would have two kids, and maybe have written a book, and been to Africa, and have found my niche in life.  I would of course no longer be suffering from anxiety and vicious panic attacks. By twenty-five everything would be all smoothed out. And if not by twenty-five, probably by the time I'm thirty...Right?

We put so much power on our expectations.

Right now there is so much power in my expectation that I'll be alive tomorrow.

Not only do I desire to be alive tomorrow, but I expect to be.

I also expect that Eric and I will be able to have children when that time comes. And I expect those children to be healthy and to outlive both me and him.

We seem to have these assumptions or expectations for our lives and if things don't end up that way, we are devastated.

They may be social norms that we have adopted, or things that are hearts deeply desire, or expectations we feel have been put on us by loved ones.

Being healthy, graduating college, getting married, having kids, living until we're of a ripe old age, having a good job, having a comfortable amount of money, being happy.

Just a few of these expectations that I hold for myself, and many of you may hold for yourselves as well.

Is this why we are so often disappointed? Is this why we are outraged when somehow our own plans are thwarted? Is this why we have mini adult temper tantrums when anything feels out of our control?

We need to let go of some of our expectations. We need to keep things in perspective.

The gift of these lives we are living are nothing short of that; a gift.

There is no guarantee that any of those expectations that we have for our life will happen for us.

NO GUARANTEE.

But that is okay.

GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL.

When our lives are crumbling to bits and pieces. When we have lost a loved one, are dying ourselves, are parenting a troubled child, fighting a mental illness, fighting the mundane of our everyday lives...God is in control.

Last week I finished a book I was reading about a little girl in Haiti. It was a fictional story, but written by a Haitian woman. She described gang violence and government corruption, poverty, and simplicity. It got me thinking about my expectations. How entitled they are. How entitled I feel to a life of health, happiness; to any life at all.

I was humbled. And continue to be humbled.

God is still good when our expectations are not met. God is still in control

And maybe...just maybe, having less of them will give us the peace we have been searching for.

Maybe if we expect less we will not spend so much time being disappointed and angry.

Maybe we will experience more joy, accepting life with open hands; ready to accept and let go as we are asked to.

Let's open our hands, friends, and keep them open through all the ebbs and flows of our lives.

The real reasons it may be the end times.

I read a status on Facebook the other day, that read something like this: "You know it's the end times, when gay marriage becomes legal in the U.S."

I can honestly say that I was shocked by that statement. 

If anything is pointing towards the ends times, it's not a law made to protect. Regardless of whether or not you promote the LGBT lifestyle, you cannot honestly sit there and say that this is one of main issues drastically affecting our world today. 

There are a number of terrifying, unimaginably hateful  things going on in our world, and this is not one of them.

Isis. That's something to talk about, to fear, to protest. According to abc news, an attack in Tunisia last Friday left 38 dead. We were too busy debating, hating, and discussing biblical implications of the legalization of gay marriage that we missed it.

According to National Human Trafficking Resource Center 3,598 sex trafficking cases were were reported in the U.S. in 2014. And those are just the cases reported. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 4.5 million people trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally.

According to AFCARS, 510,000 children are in foster care. Children in need of love. Children who may have never had a birthday party, or been kissed when they scrape their knee. Children who desperately need to be loved unconditionally. Do we really even care? 

According to the Foster Club, if nothing changes by the year 2020: 

• "22,500 children will die or be neglected before their fifth birthday"
•  "More than 10.5 million children will spend some time in foster care"
• "More than 300,000 children will age out of the foster care system, some in poor health and many unprepared for success in higher education, technical college or the workforce"
• 75,000 former foster youth, who aged out of the system, will experience homelessness"

This is only a small piece of the pain that surrounds our world, horrible suffering that I have not even mentioned here. This is the stuff worth fighting against my friends. This is the bad stuff, the stuff we need to fight against with every ounce of our being.

We are focused on the wrong thing here. The legalization of gay marriage may offend you, it may straight up contradict your beliefs, it may cause you to question your faith in a way that makes you uncomfortable, but it is not the end of the world. 

The end of the world is that sweet little kiddos have no one to love them. The end of the world is that people just like you and I are being sex trafficked; sold,  beaten, drugged, raped. The end of the world is that there are people all around us with nothing to eat and nowhere to live. The end of the world is that there are groups like ISIS controlling the world by fear and violence.

The world is breaking all around us. Can we not see it?

 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,  I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

-Matthew 34-46-

God's favorite. why I'll never be enough

I secretly want to be God's favorite.

I want to be His pride and joy, His perfect daughter, His warrior, His deepest love, I want to exceed His expectations, I want to outshine all His other people.

But then I wake up every morning and fall flat on my face; And sometimes I spend the whole day there, army crawling through the rest of the day.

What an exhausting life it is, when you are trying to be "enough" and there is no such thing.

In our daily lives we are encouraged to have more, be more, do more.

Facebook tells me my life isn't enough, Pinterest tells me my house isn't enough, Instagram tells me I'm not pretty enough, Twitter tells me I'm not witty enough.

Turning on the TV is toxic for the heart aching for enoughness. Every commercial is designed to leave you wanting more, needing more, searching for more.

And we take the bait.

Not all the time, but sometimes. It sucks us deeper into the ache for enoughness. We become slaves of the need to be the best, and the lie that it's achievable.

There's a battle within ourselves. A battle to search for enoughness, and to rest in it. Many of us know where we can really find it. We have known the peace that passes understanding. We have found it in an open field, or by the ocean, washing dishes, or cleaning floors.

It's all around us and within is, but still we search.

In Romans 7:15, Paul says this:

"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate"

Does that sounds familiar? Probably because Paul was human too and he gets it.

He understands this pull to all this human, and this deep desire for all that is God.

The good news here is that God is our enoughness. He is our bread and our water, our great fortress, our deliverer, our King.

Somehow He knows us all so intimately. He knows the number of hairs on our head, our lying down and sitting up. He knows the deepest places of our hearts.

There is no need to impress Him, no need to win Him over, no need to be something in this world in order to be special to Him.

We will never be His favorite, because it is as if we are His only. In true God fashion, we will never understand how this can be. But we can rest in His enoughness, the peace that passes all understanding, the greatest love we will ever know.

This week in youth group our pastor showed this video to the teens. It's beautifully corny and incredibly powerful. I encourage you all to take 10 minutes and watch it.

Rest in His enoughness. It is freely given.

salmon cakes

When I was home last week my sweet Mama made some good old fashioned salmon cakes. Her mom made them for her as a kid and so she has made them for us. All you need is a can of salmon, an egg or 2, and a bowl of bread crumbs. For less than 50 cents per person, everyone is fed.

Now that I am an adult of sorts, I am noticing more about the world around me. So, when I bit into my crispy salmon cake I took notice (for the first time) of the tiny little bones underneath the flaky crust. I announced my discovery to the rest of my family. "Oh yeah, they're edible," my mom said offhandedly, and went back to her conversation with my sister.

They didn't taste like bones, they didn't even really crunch like bones, but I knew that they were bones. I've always had a weird thing with food consistency, especially in any kind of meat, and thus I was extremely perturbed by my discovery. Thankfully those little cakes are so good that the idea not to eat them at all barely crossed my mind. But it could of. I could've chosen not to eat that scrumptious salmon cake because of the no big deal, easily digestible bones inside.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder If I am living to avoid the little bones in my salmon cake? Am I freaking out about the small things; picking them out of my life although they are barely visible? Am I more worried about the bones than I am about enjoying the meat around them?

I have found that sometimes those "meaty" moments are the most painful.  I have learned more when I feel as if my entire soul is about to break than I do when I feel whole.

There are so many little bones in our lives. So many moments that we let define us that have no business doing so. Are we living out of those moments? Or are we living out of the ones with substance, the ones that will fill our bellies and not just our mouths. The ones that will carry us forward, not stop us in our tracks.