My blog prompt was telling me to write something thing about what to do when you get a “not yet” answer. It’s supposed to be how to deal with something that you’ve prayed for but somehow you get the feeling that God is saying to you, “not yet”.
I got inspired, I wanted to write about it, but something else..
The two words that changed my life were not shouted at me. They weren’t a sermon, or a verse someone quoted to try and fix me. They were spoken softly, in a hospital bed, in my own dialect.
Not yet.
Let me back up.
I woke to a white room, bright light streaming through the window, my whole body heavy in a way I didn’t have words for. And before I understood where I was or what I had done, I heard a voice.
“Child, not yet.”
I still can’t describe that voice. It was nothing like anything I had ever heard, strange and yet somehow familiar, like something I had known my entire life. I can’t even explain how I heard it. I only know that it came to me in Waray. My dialect. The language of home, the one you don’t have to translate to feel.
I had just been brought back. In one of my darkest episodes, I had taken far more of my medication than I was ever meant to, the very pills that were supposed to help me carry my depression and my anxiety — because in that season, I did not want to wake up anymore.
But I woke up. And Someone was already there, telling me it wasn’t time.
I wasn’t grateful at first
I want to be honest with you, because I think honesty is the only thing worth writing about.
I did not open my eyes and feel saved. Part of me was confused. Part of me, if I’m telling the whole truth, was angry. I had wanted the pain to stop, and instead I was being handed back the very same life, with the same weight in it — waiting for me on the other side of that hospital door.
“Not yet” did not feel like a gift that day. It felt like a sentence I hadn’t asked for.
It has taken me years to understand what I was actually being told. Years of therapy. Years of prayer. Years of surrendering the same fear a hundred times over. Because slowly, I came to see that “not yet” is not the same as “no.” And it is nothing at all like “never.” “Not yet” means there is still something here for you. It means the story isn’t finished. It means: stay. I am not done with you.
What “not yet” taught me about faith
Here is what I’ve learned about the way our prayers get answered.
We ask for the thing, the healing, the relief, the open door, the person, the peace — and we want it now. We want the yes, on our schedule, in the shape we imagined. And when it doesn’t come the way we pictured, we decide the answer must be no, and we lose heart.
But so much of my life has been lived in the space between the prayer and the answer. In the “not yet.”
When I was fighting for my children, I begged for it to be over. It was not over for a long, long time. Not yet. When I was rebuilding my life from nothing — learning to be a mother and a provider and a whole person all at the same time — I pleaded for it to get easier. It got easier slowly, in its own time. Not yet.
And every single time, the waiting was doing something in me that a quick yes never could have. It was quietly making me into the woman who could actually carry the very thing I was praying for.
I couldn’t see it while I was in it. You almost never can. But looking back now, the “not yets” of my life were not God ignoring me. They were God growing me.
The mission on the other side of “not yet”
I know now why it wasn’t my time.
It wasn’t my time because my children still needed their mother. It wasn’t my time because there were years of ordinary Sundays and small joys and quiet coffee-in-the-morning moments that I would have missed completely. It wasn’t my time because I had a purpose I didn’t even know about yet, maybe this blog, these words, and the chance to look another tired woman in the eye and tell her: you are not alone, and you are not finished either.
That’s the thing about a “not yet.” In the moment, it can feel like a door closing in your face. But sometimes it is the only reason you are still here to see everything good that comes after it.
I am still here. And I believe you are reading this for a reason, too.
If you’re living in your own “not yet”
Maybe you are waiting on an answer that hasn’t come. A prayer that seems to echo back with only silence. A season that has already lasted so much longer than you thought you could bear.
I won’t pretend to know exactly what you’re carrying. But I will tell you what I wish someone had told me in that white room: the silence is not a no. The waiting is not your punishment. And the fact that you are still here — even exhausted, even unsure, even barely hanging on — is not an accident.
Your “not yet” may turn out to be the most important thing that ever happens to you.
Please stay for it.
Keeping the faith,
Anne
P.S. In the years that followed, I doubted that it was a message that I needed to hear. I sought for answers to support my own conclusion that it was the pills because of it can cause hallucination, auditory or visual. For many years, I battled with these thoughts, trying to understand everything. But as I grow older, I realized that I don’t need to find the answer from others, but to dig deep inside. What does my heart tell me? When I had reconciled myself with an answer, only then I had the peace I wanted.
If you are struggling with thoughts of ending your life, please reach out — you were never meant to carry this alone. In the Philippines, the NCMH Crisis Hotline is available 24/7 at 1553 (toll-free landline) or 0917-899-8727. Wherever you are in the world, you can find a local crisis line through the International Association for Suicide Prevention at iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres. There is a “not yet” written over your life, too. I promise it’s worth waiting for.
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