The Bounty of No

On weeknights I will frequently go to my favorite coffee shop when I get off of work to unwind from the day. Often I will go sip on some coffee or wine while I read one of the myriad of books in my rotation. Sometimes I go to meet up with friends, which if I’m honest is always my preference, but the Lord is teaching me to be faithful with the slowness of my social life in this season - a discipline in itself. In either case, I will usually find myself scrolling on my phone for a couple of minutes at some point, and often longer when I’m not being intentional which is more than I’d like to admit. 

One such time I was doing this, I scrolled past a post from an old co-worker. We haven’t kept in touch since college apart from the disconnected connection of social media, but I’ve watched from afar as she first got married and then had her first child. Her post simply said “I still remember the days I prayed for the things I now have.” I stopped scrolling and leaned back. The light from the edison bulbs overhead cast a yellow glow on my hands and my phone. A small defensive note rose up in me. It was tiny and innocuous, I almost missed it entirely. But I didn’t, so I decided to pick at that frayed edge, see what strings might tug loose and unravel. Why did that bother me at all, and why did it matter? 

I quickly laid her life against mine. I have prayed for many things that didn’t come to fruition. In fact, a cursory glance at my life up till now would say I have seen more prayers answered with “no” or “not yet," than I have seen “yes.” A marriage that hasn’t happened, relationships that weren’t reconciled, a prodigal brother who has neither come home nor been adopted as a holy son, and a host of other smaller, trivial requests that have collected dust in the corner. That was it. The piece inside me that rebelled against her simple and, truly, innocent statement.

I am not assuming she has lived a charmed life nor that she hasn’t experienced her share of disappointments. It’s evident in that painful word “still,” implying there were days, weeks, perhaps years of longing unanswered. To live in a broken world is to experience brokenness. But that defensiveness rose in me from a realization that in many ways, I haven’t reached the other side of that aching still. 

For much of my life I thought that the Lord did not want to give me good things, that he would only ever withhold from me and it didn’t matter if I was faithful or not. (Never mind that my faithfulness is frail and flawed at best.) The answer would always be no. In response to this broken belief, I hid my heart and my desires from Him where I thought they might be safe. I believed rightly that bringing my desires into the light would result in their certain death. What I didn’t understand rightly was the power of resurrection. 

For years I have been learning to surreptitiously carry my dreams into the light, and I am still learning. I have cradled these fragile hopes like delicate glass as I put them before the Lord, gingerly placing one after the other before him, hoping they wouldn’t shatter. And yes, if I can be honest, often those things did die. But we misunderstand that death. My flesh, wound tightly into those things that wouldn’t satisfy, died, but resurrection came from the “no.” Death and disappointment hurt, but they don’t have the final say - not in eternity, and not even in this life. 

Each glass dream the Lord takes from our sight or even crushes in the midst of it, He redeems into something sturdier. More trustworthy. The underlying seed of truth that is present in our supplications is watered and grows into bloom. In the withholding of what we think we need, we are given the bread that truly satisfies, the living water that permanently slakes our thirst. Instead of the single dish we asked for, we are given a feast.  A harvest of fruits like joy, peace, love, assurance, kindness, they are all grown out of the soil of answered prayers. We merely have to see that every prayer we have is answered with the yes that is best for our souls - even when it is hidden within a denial. At almost 30, I can see that a lot of the things I thought were broken promises were actually the greatest gifts to me.  I experience Jesus in the sweetest ways in the moments I let Him minister to my disappointment. And I’m sure at 40, I’ll see even more, and at 50 even more, and at 60, and at 70, and on and on. 

So yes, I still remember the days I prayed for the things I have not yet received - some of which I may never receive - but I have gotten in its place something better, as did my old friend who has seen her desires come to life. He is equally in our seemingly unanswered prayers as he is in our fulfilled ones. For each person, giving us what we need to gain more of him. Fullness of life and joy is not found in the receipt of a thing or in its lack, but from a right perspective of what each shows us - that whether we have abundance or barely enough to scrape by, that the Lord is the true prize for us all. The God who did not spare his son, will not spare any extravagance of what’s true, noble, lovely, or pure for us. 

I never thought I’d be grateful for the no’s and not yets, but I am immensely in their debt for the bounty they’ve produced in me. I pray you get all the desires of your heart and your story is one of harvest in the ways that you ask, but I pray more deeply that whether you experience that or its opposite, that your harvest would always be full of the yes and amens in Jesus himself.