Still on Hold, Still Stitching: Waiting for God in Lent

Piecing Together Faith When the Answers Don’t Come and the Work Isn’t Done

There’s a certain ache in Psalm 42 that feels like it belongs to Lent. The kind of longing that settles in your bones, that makes you wake up in the middle of the night feeling hollow. It starts with the image of a deer, thirsty and desperate, searching for water. But lately, I’ve been sitting more with another line: My tears have been my food both day and night (Psalm 42:3, CEB).

There’s something deeply human about that—grief that takes up so much space inside you that it becomes the only thing you consume. And lately, it’s hit even harder. I found out recently that I’ve been blocked on every platform by someone I loved—someone I truly believed I had a deep connection with, someone I thought would be in my life for a long time. Every. Single. One. It’s a strange, gut-punch kind of pain—realizing how easily someone you loved can erase you, like you were just a chapter they finished and didn’t bother bookmarking. It makes me wonder if any of it was ever real, or if I just imagined the connection we had.

So when the psalmist says, "My tears have been my food both day and night"—I feel that. Not in a poetic, distant way. But in a visceral, hard-to-breathe kind of way. The kind of way where you're crying at red lights and struggling to sleep because the grief keeps showing up like it has a key to your apartment.

And I know, I know—God is supposed to be near to the brokenhearted. But in moments like this, it doesn’t feel like nearness. It feels like absence. It feels like I’m shouting into a void, wondering not just Where is my God? but Why is God doing this to me? or at the very least, Why is God letting this happen? What lesson am I supposed to be learning here, exactly? Because I’d really like to return the textbook and drop the class.

I’ve known that feeling. Maybe you have too. The loss of a relationship, the unraveling of something you thought would last, the quiet moments when you realize someone isn’t coming back. And I keep thinking—I wish I’d known the last hug was the last hug. I wish I’d known the last conversation was it, the final page in a chapter I wasn’t ready to finish. There’s no way to go back and make those moments stretch longer. I don’t get closure. I don’t get resolution. I’m left with more questions than answers—and if we’re being honest, I probably won’t get most of the answers I want.

And in those moments, I find myself echoing the question from the psalm: Where’s your God now? (Psalm 42:3, CEB) Except, I don’t need others to ask it for me. I ask it of myself. And honestly? Sometimes the answer feels like radio silence.

That’s the tension of Lent, isn’t it? The deep knowing that God is present, but also the aching absence that makes it hard to believe. We sing about God’s steadfast love on Sunday morning, but what about the Monday afternoons when loneliness settles in? What about the nights when prayers feel like they disappear into silence? What does faith look like when you’re crying into your pillow and nothing changes? And yes, I know—I’m a pastor. I should probably give you a comforting, well-wrapped theological answer here. But the truth? Sometimes faith feels like a long, awkward silence where you’re just left sitting there wondering if God put you on hold and forgot to pick back up.

I think about my quilt projects, the ones that sit unfinished. Some because I’ve run out of time, some because I can’t quite figure out how the pieces should come together. Some because I got frustrated and walked away. And let’s be honest, some because I just lost interest. But I don’t throw them out. I keep them, folded up, waiting. There’s longing in that too—a desire to see the work completed, to hold something that’s whole.

Maybe that’s why I resonate with the psalmist. They don’t tie everything up neatly. They don’t say, God showed up right away and fixed it all. Instead, they wrestle. They name the longing. They wait. And I think that’s a relief, because I’d rather be honest with God than pretend I have it all together.

Mr. Rogers used to say, Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable. He understood that naming our grief, our longing, our doubt doesn’t make them disappear, but it helps us carry them. He created space for children (and honestly, for all of us) to sit with hard feelings rather than rush past them. He didn’t try to fix everything, but he did remind us we weren’t alone in it.

And let’s be real—if Mr. Rogers had ever turned to the camera and said, Sometimes life is really hard and you won’t get any answers and it’ll feel like you’re shouting into the void, but you are still loved, we’d all be in tears and quoting him on Pinterest. Because we need to hear that. We need to know that faith isn’t about having the answers, but about showing up to the questions anyway.

I wonder if that’s part of faith too—learning to sit with longing instead of demanding resolution. What if Lent is less about finding answers and more about learning to live in the questions? What if faith isn’t about certainty, but about showing up anyway? What if the work of believing is less like solving a puzzle and more like quilting—piece by piece, stitch by stitch, trusting that something beautiful will come together even when you can’t quite see it yet?

What do you do with your own unanswered prayers? How do you hold space for the longing that doesn’t go away? When you cry out, Where is God?, what do you hear in return? And be honest—do you sometimes want to shake your fist at the sky and yell, Seriously, where ARE you? Because same.

And yet, the psalmist circles back. Not with an answer, but with a reminder: Hope in God! Because I will again give him thanks—my saving presence and my God (Psalm 42:11, CEB). Again. Not immediately, not right now, but again. That’s the kind of faith I can hold onto—the kind that says, I don’t get it, but I’ll keep showing up anyway.

For now, I take a deep breath. I let the questions stay—even though that’s hard. Especially when something new comes along and rips the bandage off a wound that wasn’t even fully healed yet. Especially when the grief feels fresh all over again, like it’s found a way to sneak back in and take up residence in your chest. Letting the questions stay doesn’t mean I’m at peace with them—it just means I’m choosing not to shove them aside or pretend they don’t matter. I keep sewing, even when I don’t know what the final piece will look like. And I hold onto the psalmist’s final words, not as certainty, but as hope: Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed? Why are you so upset inside? Hope in God! Because I will again give him thanks—my saving presence and my God (Psalm 42:11, CEB).

May you find space this week to sit with your questions, to name your longing, and to trust that even when God feels far away, the story isn’t over yet.

May you know that your grief is real—even when others can’t see it. May you know that the ache you carry, the unanswered prayers, the moments you replay wishing you'd known it was the last hug, the last conversation—all of it is sacred. May you have grace with yourself when the pain comes in waves and the questions refuse to be quiet.

May you have the courage to hold space for the longing, the strength to stay with the grief when it reopens, and the wisdom to know that healing is not linear. May you know that God does not discard or erase you, even if others have. That your worth is not diminished by someone else’s departure.

And when the silence stretches too long, when the sadness takes up more room than you’d like, may you hear—even if only faintly—the truth that you are not forgotten. That presence, not certainty, is the heart of faith. That even in the unraveling, something is being stitched together in you.

You will praise again. You will love again. You will hope again. Even if you don’t believe that right now, I’ll believe it for you.

Go in peace. Go in your questions. Go in love. Amen.