A Prayer for the Days Between the Test and the Call

The nothing in between

The test is done. The call has not come. You keep the phone on loud even though you never turn the ringer off, and you check it more than you'd admit to anyone. There is no form to fill out, no doctor to call, no next step to take. You have already done the one thing there was to do. Now there is only this gap, and it is worse than you expected, because it is empty of anything to hold on to.

This is not the waiting people write songs about, the kind with a wedding at the end of it. It is the waiting where nothing is asked of you except to keep breathing until the phone rings. That is a strange kind of hard. There is no task to distract you from it, and no way to make it go faster.

What this waiting is not

If there is a real, practical thing you can still do, a form to send, a second opinion to ask for, a question you forgot to ask the technician, do it. Waiting is not a reason to leave something undone that would actually help. But most of the time, in these particular days, there genuinely is nothing left to do. The scan is read when it is read. The lab runs on its own schedule. You are not failing at anything by not being able to fix the timeline. This piece is about that specific, actionless waiting, not about avoiding a call you should be making.

What you are allowed to say

You do not need a tidy prayer for this. You are allowed to say you are scared. You are allowed to say you don't know what you're praying for, because you don't know yet what you're facing. You are allowed to be angry that this is taking so long, or numb, or unable to think about anything else no matter how hard you try to distract yourself.

The Psalms already say these things, in worse situations than most of us will ever face, and they were kept in the book anyway.

Out of the depths I have cried to you, LORD. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my petitions. If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared. I wait for the LORD. My soul waits. I hope in his word. My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.

Psalm 130:1–6

This was written by someone in real trouble, not someone composing a nice thought about patience. The psalm doesn't know yet how things will turn out. It says so directly: I wait, my soul waits. It compares the waiting to a night watchman, someone whose whole job is to stay awake and stare at the dark until there's enough light to see by. That is close to what you are doing right now, except your watch has a phone instead of a horizon. You don't have to arrive at hope by the end of your prayer tonight. The psalm doesn't either. It just keeps looking toward morning.

Waiting that was written down before the answer came

One of the strange things about the Bible's waiting passages is that most of them were written from inside the wait, before anyone knew how the story would end.

I waited patiently for the LORD. He turned to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand. He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.

Psalm 40:1–3

David wrote this after the pit, looking back. But notice what he doesn't say: he doesn't say the waiting felt patient while he was in it, or that he understood what was happening at the time. He only knew that afterward. If you are in the pit part of this psalm right now, that is not a failure to trust properly. That is where the psalm starts too.

Habakkuk is even more exposed about it. He has a complaint against God, he doesn't understand what's happening in his country, and instead of resolving it, he does something almost administrative: he goes and stands at his post to wait for an answer.

I will stand at my watch and set myself on the ramparts, and will look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint. The LORD answered me, "Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who runs may read it. For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hurries towards the end, and won't prove false. Though it takes time, wait for it, because it will surely come. It won't delay.

Habakkuk 2:1–4

The answer Habakkuk gets is not the resolution, it's permission to keep waiting for one. Though it takes time, wait for it. That's not much to hand someone who wants an answer tonight, but it is honest, and it did not come with a promise of what the outcome would be, only that the waiting itself was not being wasted or ignored.

Something small for tonight

You don't need to pray for a particular result. You are not required to ask God to make the scan say a certain thing, and you don't have to talk yourself into feeling calm before you're ready to. Tonight, it is enough to say where you are.

Tell someone that you're waiting, if you haven't. Waiting alone in a room checking a phone is heavier than waiting known by even one other person. That is not a spiritual instruction, it is just true.

If you want a place to put words to this for yourself, there is a page at /pray built for exactly that, and a longer list of situations at /prayers if this isn't the only thing weighing on you right now.

One line, before you turn the lamp off: I don't know what tomorrow's call will say. I am still here, still waiting, and I am not asking you to skip it, only to be with me while it passes.