What to do with unanswered prayer

Unanswered prayer. I don't know about you, but I have many. Not just from today, but from yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. In fact, I have a life time of unanswered prayers. From years and years of asking. From years and years of needs. And so, I look at all of these unanswered prayers and wonder, what does it say about me? What does it say about my God?

I am not sure, but I suspect it has to do with mystery.

Mystery is such a part of our lives that I doubt we think much about it. And yet, we are confronted with it when we think of faith, of prayer, and of eternity. So much unknowing.

The right kind of mystery offers us the chance to sit in wonder. And we can only sit in wonder when we learn silence.

Silence is more than lack of noise. The kind of silence we need to be still before mystery seems to come only after we have been disappointed, when life has not turned out as we thought it should, when answers no longer satisfy. Then, we seem to come to a silence that waits.

I learned that kind of silence as a nun living in a monastery. I learned it through unanswered prayer, lots of unanswered prayer. When you are a cloistered nun, and your whole life is given over to prayer, unanswered prayer is not just an annoyance, it hits at the very core of your dedicated life. It brings into question everything you say you believe in and the very life you live.

In that time, in a time of accumulated unanswered prayer, I gave up asking. I no longer knew what to say. I became dumb before God. It was not a kind dumb, like that of a lamb, but a desperate dumb, like a soul who is in despair. A silence imposed by God's silence. A silence that results from darkness. My unanswered prayers became a kind of dumb that knows not what to say or even what to think.

In that darkness, in that silence, I learned a new kind of prayer. I learned to be open to mystery. I learned a prayer that listens.

Sitting before God in a stance of listening brought me into a whole new relationship with God. Sitting in silence, I discovered that the God I thought I knew was a God I did not know. I came to realize that I was being lifted up precisely when I thought I was being cast down. I found that the fog that seemed to shroud me was really passing clouds along my journey as my spiritual life came to a new horizon.

It was silence that helped me to be open to mystery. And I learned that silence, the right kind of silence, because of unanswered prayer.

And so today, when my prayer goes unanswered, I try to remember the words of psalm 46:10: Be still and know that I am God.  I try to remember, having my prayer answered is not the most important thing in life. Entering deeper into mystery is.