[un]Answered Prayers with No Delivery Date

The cosmic joke of answered prayers

Sep 17, 2024

Moments I have been waiting (praying) for — are finally here.

And in making that profound statement, I acknowledge the irony that there is never truly a static “here” that we arrive at in this reality. Prayers never actually land in our lap to stay in one place. Life, I have learned, is always in a constant flux of timeline shifts that change from moment to moment. We are beings always in transition. New things come into our life and expired things leave in a constant flux.

With each breath we take, we are made anew.

However sometimes, on rare occasions, it feels like all of the stars align into place for a brief moment in time for us to pause, look back, and admire the masterpiece that has arrived at our doorstep. Like a cute cuddly cat, that we know won’t stay on our laps forever, prayers can fly in for a brief moment. And here I am, as I welcome into my life once unanswered prayers that have been years in the making that have manifested themselves like a bouquet of flowers being hand delivered to me at my doorstep. YAY!! Right?! These are truly some of those times in life that we deserve to honor ourselves with a sacred pause of reflection.

And at the same time…

I do not want to dismiss what has felt like for YEARS I opened the door in the morning expecting a bouquet of flowers and all I got was a delayed shipping notice with no delivery date attached and a note saying, “they’re on their way”. It truly feels like a cosmic joke sometimes. After years of prayer one day, they finally arrive, and we want to stop time, but the world keeps spinning.

Today, I find myself at the threshold of another new reality. As a new career has emerged from the depths of the void. I began yesterday on a year-long journey as a resident chaplain at a level one trauma hospital in Tampa. I have also been opening myself up to a new budding romantic relationship. Between the two, there are many new experiences opening my heart day by day as I reap what I have sowed over the last four years since my reawakening as a spiritual being. It feels like I am on the brink of the crest of a new crashing wave that will wash me onto the shoreline of a whole new lived reality. Through the power of prayer and the relentless daily devotion of following the divine call pulling of my heart I am receiving gifts I only once dreamed of.

Have you ever been at one of these crossings in your life?

These distinct moments where there are clear before and after moments that cut through time and space to mark a permanent shift in your lived reality?

When it happens for me, I can feel the energy build in my body like rising water. It begins as a small bubble that feels foreign in the depths of the ocean making its way to the surface, sometimes taking years, wanting to break through towards the sun. It comes out of the blue with force and at the same time comes with a knowing from deep within me that has been there for lifetimes.

And this season of life is ready to bloom after four (and more) years of nurturing the soil in which I planted these dreams as small seeds many years ago. It has taken the delicate balance of action and surrender and learning how to dance with the divine to let the prayers come through. It is like I am crossing a finish line of one race as I take a moment to pause and catch my breath before the next race begins.

For many years I have been walking the path of the spiritual mystic as I leaned into a big “T” truth that is beyond rational thought and intellect. It is only looking back that I can see how stars aligned to bring me to this very moment that I’m in. While some prayers haven’t come to fruition yet, others surely have. I don’t believe we can control the order in what we are calling into our lives, we can only just take small steps day by day to walk towards them and meet them somewhere as they walk towards us on our path.

Because believe me, I am still in the waiting zone of the DMV for some prayers. I don’t want to glamorize all of it. There is frustration and despair in the process of waiting on unanswered prayers. For example, there are still hopes in my heart like a new car that the runs with AC as I drive in the FL heat (If you remember, I kicked a rock in the AC unit on my epic road trip last year driving up Hatch Patch Mountain at the TN/NC border) and debts I still have to repay to people who whole-heartedly believe in me, yet it feels like I flopped the start-up investment finances as a new entrepreneur for Inward Athlete. As a chaplain, I hold people to be witnessed in the midst of their prayers waiting to be answered on their healing journeys in the hospital.

And something that I really need you to know as I take a moment of reflection, is that even though I have prayed for this reality for many years to be here, there is still grief surfacing from within my being. I have sadness as I let go of one chapter that was once filled with the unknown, over twelve years of singlehood, and feeling like a maidan wandering listening to Fleetwood Mac “Gypsy” with my windows down on the open road for years. There is an energy about the young maiden that I will miss dearly as I let her go and look back at her in my rearview mirror.

I have deeper roots growing in this next season. One that takes a shift from maidan to mother. One within my own being but also in geographical location, within co-creative partnership, within my career and business as I feel pulled into the wave that churns one from maiden to mother. My anxiety and mental health finally feel stable enough to be in a place where I can take ownership of the goals that I’ve had to postpone timelines on when I wasn’t ready. And I feel devoted and on mission enough to begin to water these new seeds just like the last ones.

With every new beginning comes another step into the unknown. Because being willing to step into any unknown is dysregulating. The body and the mind try to find their footing amid the newness of answered prayers. There is a loss of comfort, the familiar, that leaves us when we are willing to welcome in the new. There will be both joy of one chapter beginning and grief of one chapter ending, both can coexist. Everything is shifting and changing. Can you let it all be?

I will leave you with this

If you are in a season of waiting on answered prayers my advice for you would be to keep showing-up with self-compassion that they are on their way as you continue to walk towards them in devotion. Maybe they will not appear on your timeline but on the timeline that is conspiring on your behalf. The timeline that won’t deliver your dreams until you can hold them in your hands and mother them fully to life.

Leave a comment with a prayer you are praying for <3 sending you so much love as you wait to meet them.

In Awe of Grief with Jennifer Gellock, PhD

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