Sunday Porch Converstation: The Faith That Didn’t Rescue Me

The rescue never came. Here’s what came instead.

It’s the first Sunday of August, and even the early morning has stopped being kind. Ninety-four degrees before the sun is fully up. This is the stretch of a Phoenix summer when you stop checking the forecast for relief, because you already know what it says. And that — a season where you stop expecting the break — is exactly what I want to talk about this morning. Because I’ve lived that season on the inside, too.

Years ago, in my first marriage, I prayed one prayer more than I have ever prayed anything in my life: save this. Repair this. Do not let this end. I prayed it in church and in parking lots. I fasted. I claimed the verses. I did every faithful thing a woman is told will move the hand of God.

The marriage ended anyway.

I’m not going to tell you why, or assign the blame,
because that’s not what this letter is about.
This letter is about the silence.

Because that’s the part the songs never covered. I grew up on rescue music — breakthrough is coming, the walls fall down, He makes a way. Nobody handed me a hymn for the walls stayed up. Nobody taught me what to do on the Sunday after the thing you begged God to save is simply… over, and you still have to stand in the sanctuary with your hands raised while your heart files for a divorce of its own.

And here is my chapter, the one I don’t get to skip. Before that season, when I heard about someone whose prayer wasn’t answered, some quiet, well-dressed part of me wondered what they’d done wrong. Not enough faith. Not the right prayer. Some hidden thing. I never said it out loud — we never do — but I carried that terrible arithmetic right up until the day I became the woman on the other side of it. The silence of God will cure you of your theories about the silence of God.

I want to be careful here, because I know who sits on this porch. Some of you prayed for a marriage. Some of you prayed for a diagnosis to change, a child to come home, a body to hold on. And some of you are still in the silence right now, doing the math on your own faith at two in the morning. So let me say plainly what I found down there:

The rescue I prayed for never came.
And God never left the room.
I have had to learn that both of those are true.

· · ·

There’s an old story about a man who wrestled with God through the whole night and wouldn’t let go until he was blessed. He got his blessing. He also left with a limp — and he limped for the rest of his life. We quote the blessing part. We skip the limp.

But I’ve come to believe the limp was part of the blessing. Because the faith I walked out of that season with is nothing like the faith I walked in with. The old faith was a vending-machine arrangement — right prayers in, rescue out — and it was one unanswered season away from collapsing, which is exactly what it did. The faith that grew up out of that collapse is slower, quieter, and infinitely harder to kill. I used to have a faith that could answer every question. Now I have one that can survive not being answered. Only one of those is sturdy enough to sit with you in yours.

That’s the strange gift I never asked for: people bring me their unanswered prayers now. Not because I have an explanation — I don’t, and I’ve stopped renting one out. They bring them because they can see I’m carrying my own, and still here, and still His. A faith that has survived its own disappointment is the only kind sturdy enough to hold somebody else’s.

The rescue never came.
The relationship survived.
I mean the one with God.

I won’t tie a bow on this, because the silence I lived through deserves better than a bow, and so does yours. I still don’t know why some walls fall and some stay standing. What I know is that I stayed — not because I got my answer, but because somewhere in the long heat of it, the Presence became worth more to me than the rescue. That’s not the testimony that gets the applause. It’s just the true one.

And if your prayer is still unanswered this morning — I’m not going to explain God to you. I’m just going to sit out here in the heat with you, limping, believing. There’s a seat on this porch whether you pray or not — and there’s especially one if you prayed and it didn’t work.

With warmth from the porch,

Kristi

❦

About the Author

Kristi M. Estrada, LPC-S, NCC, SEP, is a licensed professional counselor-supervisor and somatic trauma therapist in Phoenix, Arizona, founder of Kristi Estrada, LPC-S, SEP & Associates, and the creator of Trauma Restorative Care™. Known to many as The Healing Servant, she writes at the intersection of nervous system science, attachment repair, and a faith that has been through the fire and walks with a limp — held deeply, never handed to the reader as a requirement. There’s a seat on this porch whether you pray or not. Kristi’s writing is shaped as much by what she has survived as by what she has studied, which is why she doesn’t offer tidy answers — she’s never been healed by one. Her Sunday Porch Conversations reach clients, clinicians, and everyday readers who are tired of tidy answers and ready for true ones. Learn more at healingservant.com.