Praying Again After the First Prayer Went Unanswered

The second time is hard in a different way

The first time you prayed for this, you asked with everything you had. Maybe it was the diagnosis, the marriage, the child, the job that was supposed to save you. You prayed specifically. You prayed often. And it ended badly, not just unanswered but answered wrong, the worst version of the thing happened anyway. Now there is a new need in front of you, maybe not as large, and you are standing at the door of prayer again, hand on the handle, not sure you can turn it.

This is not about whether God exists or whether prayer works in general. You know what it is to ask and watch it fall apart. The question now is narrower and more personal: can you ask again, knowing what asking cost you last time.

What the first time left behind

It would be strange if it hadn't left something. Grief leaves residue. So does disappointment, especially the kind that came dressed as hope first. You may notice you can't finish a prayer sentence without flinching. You may have stopped using words you used to use freely, "please," "heal," "fix." You may pray in a flatter voice now, hedging your requests so that if they fail again, you won't have exposed as much.

None of that needs explaining away. It is not weak faith. It is what happens to a person who loved something and lost it anyway, while asking God for the opposite. If you have gone quiet instead of praying, or if you pray now with your arms folded, this piece is not here to talk you out of that. It is here to sit in it with you for a minute.

The widow in Luke's story kept coming back to a judge who had given her no reason to think he'd ever rule in her favor. Jesus told it this way:

And he spake a parable unto them to the end that they ought always to pray, and not to faint; saying, There was in a city a judge, who feared not God, and regarded not man: and there was a widow in that city; and she came oft unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest she wear me out by her continual coming. And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge saith. And shall not God avenge his elect, that cry to him day and night, and [yet] he is longsuffering over them? I say unto you, that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? Luke 18:1-8