{"id":1945,"date":"2017-07-20T08:18:55","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T13:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/?p=1945"},"modified":"2017-11-01T13:16:20","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T18:16:20","slug":"unanswered-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/2017\/07\/20\/unanswered-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting and the Gift of Unanswered Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m always honored to write for Desiring God<\/a>;
\nthis is the start of my newest article for them.
\nYou can read the whole of the article here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

I have been praying the same prayer for healing for more than twenty years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been praying for one particular thing over months or years or decades, then you know how exhausting and difficult it can feel to keep returning to God with the same petition.<\/p>\n

I was just a child when I developed trichotillomania \u2014 a hair-pulling condition \u2014 and while it\u2019s not a life-threatening condition, it has been life-altering for me. Imagine not being able to stop pulling out your own hair, even though you hate how it makes you look \u2014 and feel. That\u2019s been my daily experience for more than half of my life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been asking God to do what no doctor, therapy, or medication can: heal me. I have tried various therapies and supplements, and I continue to seek to walk in healing, but there\u2019s no clear \u201ccure\u201d for trichotillomania. I know that if I\u2019m going to be healed, I will need a gift of grace from God himself.<\/strong> And while I wholeheartedly believe in God\u2019s ability to heal me, I also know that he hasn\u2019t healed me over these last two decades. Not yet.<\/p>\n

Therefore, I wait.<\/p>\n

Why Waiting Hurts<\/h2>\n
\u00a0If I\u2019m honest, waiting is something I would prefer to avoid on any level, from waiting for a prayer to be answered all the way down to waiting in line at the grocery store. Why? Because waiting elicits the feeling of helplessness \u2014 of having to rely on someone else to act on my behalf.<\/div>\n


\nWaiting forces me to come to terms with my own weakness.<\/strong> It\u2019s what waiting does to all of us: when we can\u2019t work harder to get what we want, or when we can\u2019t manipulate life to turn out the way we want it to, or when we can\u2019t pay enough money or get enough help to achieve what our heart desperately desires, we are left with the truth of our own insufficiency: we are weak.<\/p>\nGod is with you in your waiting: he has heard every prayer, listened to every cry, kept track of every sorrow. <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n

And we aren\u2019t in control. Not even a little bit. We have to rely on someone else \u2014 on God \u2014 to act on our behalf.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult and humbling to come to terms with our own inability to make anything happen. When we have prayed and longed and hoped and begged and done all that we can and still \u2014 still<\/em> \u2014 there is no change in our circumstances, we are forced to stop our striving and simply wait, in large part because there is nothing else for us to do. We must stop and pause and look to God to act. And in that waiting, at the end of our proverbial rope, we will become aware of our inability to attain anything of lasting value on our own.<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article here, at Desiring God<\/a>!
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Still<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m always honored to write for Desiring God; this is the start of my newest article for them. You can read the whole of the article here! I have been praying the same prayer for healing for more than twenty years. If you\u2019ve been praying for one particular thing over months or years or decades, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[668,917,34,944,153,842,942,941,943,945],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ann-swindell","tag-desiring-god","tag-faith","tag-praying-for-a-long-time","tag-soul-tired","tag-still-waiting-book","tag-unanswered-prayer","tag-waiting","tag-why-hasnt-god-answered-my-prayer","tag-writing-for-desiring-god","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/When-it-Feels-Like-Youre-Waiting-Forever-The-Gift-of-Unanswered-Prayer.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}