It sounds a little ridiculous at first, comparing prayer to email or texts. But honestly? That’s the language we live in now. We send a message, we wait for a response. We expect some kind of feedback. And when it doesn’t come, we start troubleshooting.
Maybe the Wi-Fi’s out. Maybe it’s stuck in the outbox. Maybe God opened the message, got pulled into something urgent, and forgot to circle back.
I know that sounds strange. But I also know that waiting for a long time—especially when the prayer is real, personal, and tethered to your survival—does something to your heart.
There are prayers we send out that feel small, quiet, ordinary. But then there are the others. The ones where an answer, any answer, could change everything. Your path. Your sanity. Your sense of self. The kind of prayers that carry weight. That cost something to say out loud.
And when those go unanswered, or stay suspended in that in-between space, it messes with you. Not just spiritually, but physically. Emotionally. You start calculating how long you can keep waiting. You start wondering if hope has a shelf life.
And here’s the part I keep circling around.
What if there is no answer?
Not now. Not in the way I hoped. Maybe not at all.
What does a person do with that kind of silence?
I don’t have an answer. I’m not trying to offer one.
This isn’t a tidy reflection. It’s just a noticing. A moment where I realized I’ve been refreshing a spiritual inbox, looking for a sign that I haven’t been talking to myself.
And maybe that’s why I’m writing this at all. Not to solve the mystery of prayer, but to name the ache of it.
To say: if you’ve been asking, waiting, rewording, bargaining—if you’ve whispered the same thing a hundred ways and still feel like nothing’s moving—I see you.
And maybe there’s something sacred in that too.
Not the resolution. But the recognition.
The human part of us that still dares to ask, even when we’re not sure who’s answering.
So here’s where I’ll leave it, at least for now.
What do we do with the prayers that hang in the air longer than we hoped?
How do we live with the ones that change us, even when they don’t get answered?
I’m still wondering. Maybe you are too.
