A reflection on faith when God’s answer is “no”—choosing presence over platitudes and learning to sit with sorrow we cannot fix.
I am a fixer.
It’s in my wiring. I like to make things better—soothe what hurts, solve what’s broken, pour joy where there’s sorrow. Especially when it comes to the people I love, I will move heaven and earth to make it better—for them, for me, for peace.
But I’ve come to realize something hard: sometimes, my fixing isn’t really about them. Sometimes, I just can’t bear the discomfort of their pain. I want to feel useful. I want to feel like I’m helping. But at the root of it, I’m often trying to make myself feel better—because sitting in someone else’s heartbreak without a solution feels unbearable.
But what do we do when there’s nothing to fix?
What do we do when the answer to our most desperate, faith-filled prayers is simply… no?
There’s a kind of faith that parts seas. And then there’s the kind that stays when the sea does not part. The faith that doesn’t move the mountain—but still stands when it falls.
We don’t talk enough about that second kind.
We celebrate stories with breakthroughs and divine timing and “but God” plot twists. But what about the stories that never turn around? What about the endings that just end?
What do we do with the cancer that doesn’t go into remission?
With the job never offered, the baby never born, the marriage never healed?
What about John the Baptist, imprisoned and beheaded by a petty ruler at the whim of a dancing girl, even after preparing the way for Jesus?
Or Job, declared blameless, yet stripped of everything—health, wealth, family—with no explanation?
Even Jesus, in Gethsemane, prayed with such intensity He sweat blood—asking for the cup to pass.
It didn’t.
These weren’t people lacking faith. They were faithful. And still, the answer was no.
My brother once told me something that stopped me in my tracks:
“Sometimes, all someone going through it needs is for you to sit with them—not explain it away.”
That line has become a mirror for me.
Because when I’m uncomfortable with someone’s pain, I reach for words:
“God has a plan.”
“This will make you stronger.”
“One day you’ll look back and understand.”
But I’ve come to understand those words often serve me more than they serve the person suffering. They’re an attempt to wrestle meaning out of mystery. To comfort from a distance. But what if true support isn’t about offering explanations—but about offering presence?
Romans 12:15 doesn’t say “encourage those who mourn.” It says “mourn with those who mourn.”
Not fix. Not frame. Not theologize. Just be there.
Faith, I’m learning, doesn’t always look like strength. Sometimes it looks like staying.
Sometimes it’s not raising the dead—but showing up at the funeral.
It’s not clarity, but trust without answers. It’s saying, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
This kind of faith is uncomfortable. It’s slow. It doesn’t tweet well or wrap up neatly in a testimony. But I think it’s the kind of faith Jesus honored. The kind that held Him through the garden, the cross, the silence of Saturday.
If you’re like me—a fixer, a helper, someone who wants things to make sense—this may feel like failure. It’s not. It’s transformation. It’s learning to be with, not above, someone else’s sorrow.
There is holiness in holding space for pain.
There is healing in your quiet presence.
There is worship in your witness.
For Further Study and Reflection
Let these Scriptures guide your reflection as you sit with the mystery of God’s love in the midst of pain:
Job 13:15 – “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.”
Luke 22:42 – “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
John 11:35 – “Jesus wept.”
Isaiah 53:3 – “A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief…”
Romans 12:15 – “Mourn with those who mourn.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 – “The God of all comfort… comforts us so that we can comfort others.”
If this piece resonates with you, share it with someone who needs to know:
You don’t have to have the right words.
Your presence is enough.
And even when the answer is no—God is still with us.
Credit: Ehui Osei-Mensah
