Sacred Thorns: finding God in the wounds that won't heal

Year seven looks nothing like I was told it would.

By now, according to the theology I grew up with, this should be over. God should have answered. His timing should have been perfect. The story should have reached its redemptive conclusion: the testimony with the happy ending where I stand up in church and declare how faithful God was through our infertility journey, baby in my arms.

Instead, I'm staring down the reality that I'm aging out. That the door to adoption has slammed shut in our faces several times. That if anything changes now, it would require an actual miracle. And as each month passes, as each year accumulates, the probability of that miracle diminishes.

This is not the suffering I was prepared for.

The suffering I was prepared for had an expiration date. It had a purpose clause: God is teaching you patience. This is refining your faith. He's preparing you for something greater. The suffering I was prepared for always, eventually, worked out. Because God is faithful. Because He hears our prayers. Because if we just trust Him enough, long enough, pray hard enough, He will answer.

But what happens when seven years pass and He doesn't? What happens when you've done everything right, believed everything you were supposed to believe, trusted when it hurt to trust, and the miracle still doesn't come?

What happens is you start to wonder if the problem is you. If your faith wasn't strong enough. If there's some hidden sin blocking God's blessing. You start to feel like a spiritual failure, standing in church while everyone else seems to have their prayers answered.

And then, if you're like me, you start to turn bitter.

When your theology is too small

I remember the moment I realized I was starting to hate God. Not in a dramatic, fist-shaking way. In the quiet, creeping way where you stop praying because, well… what's the point? Where you avoid church on Mother's Day and baby baptism Sundays. Where someone announces a pregnancy and instead of feeling joy, you feel rage. Where "God's timing is perfect" makes you want to scream because His timing has been three, seven, ten years of nothing.

The theology I'd been handed couldn't hold this. It had no category for prayers that remain unanswered indefinitely. For suffering that doesn't serve an obvious purpose. For faith that has to keep going without the reward.

I knew I needed a bigger God than the one I'd been given. A God who could be trusted even when He doesn't give us what we desperately want. A God whose goodness doesn't depend on our happy endings. A God who can be present in suffering that doesn't make sense and doesn't resolve.

But I didn't know where to find that God.

The conversation I needed (that no one was having)

What I needed—what I was desperate for—was for someone to be gentle with my pain but honest about the theology. To tell me the hard truth: that some prayers aren't answered the way we hope. That some crosses are meant to be carried, not escaped. That spiritual growth often happens precisely in the places where our circumstances don't change.

I needed someone to tell me that my bitterness made sense, given what I'd been taught, but that there was another way. That faithful Christians throughout history have understood suffering differently. That there's theological language for what I was experiencing —redemptive suffering, the "already and not yet," the sacred, messy middle between prayer and answer.

I needed permission to be angry and grieving while still being faithful. I needed to know that my worth to God wasn't contingent on my ability to produce a miracle testimony.

But those conversations weren't happening. Not in the podcasts I could find. Not in the Christian resources available to me. So I had to claw my way to these truths alone, through years of wrestling and reading and nearly losing my faith entirely.

Maybe that's what it took for me. Maybe I had to do the hard work myself to truly own these discoveries. But I keep thinking: what if someone had spoken these truths to me gently, early on? How much bitterness could have been avoided? How many years of hating God could I have been spared?

Creating the resource I couldn't find

That's why the Sacred Thorns podcast exists. Not to fix anyone's suffering. Not to promise that if you just understand theology better, everything will work out. Not to offer seven steps to overcome your struggle or five keys to answered prayer. But to have the conversation I desperately needed seven years ago. To create space where someone could tell me: "Your suffering is real. Your anger makes sense. And there's a way to live faithfully through this without pretending it's okay while you wait for it to be over."

Through the podcast, I'm drawing from the deep wells of Christian tradition about suffering. I'm exploring what happens when prosperity gospel theology fails us. When our pain becomes a weapon in spiritual warfare. How biblical women were valued by God without the happy endings we expect. What it means to practice gratitude while still deeply longing.

I'm not approaching this as someone who has arrived or who has the answers. I'm seven years in, still waiting, still having hard days. But I've discovered a framework that lets me live faithfully in what I call "the sacred, messy middle", the space between prayer and answer, hope and reality, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

And I'm having these conversations because maybe someone else won't have to spend years turning bitter before they find a God big enough to hold their unanswered prayers.

An invitation

If you're in the middle of prolonged suffering and the Christian resources you've found feel hollow, Sacred Thorns might be the conversation you need. If you're tired of being told God's timing is perfect when His timing has been years of silence, if you're afraid you're losing your faith because the theology you were given can't hold your reality, I understand. I've been there. I'm still there some days.

What I'm offering isn't comfort or resolution. It's companionship. Honest wrestling. And the steady reminder that you can be angry at God and trust Him simultaneously, that this tension is not a failure of faith, but sometimes the most faithful thing we can do.

Sacred Thorns launched in October 2025, and new episodes are released on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month during the season. It's available on all major podcast platforms, and you can connect on Instagram @sacredthornspod and Substack @sacredthornspodcast. 

This is the podcast I wish I'd had. Maybe it's the one you need too.

This is Sacred Thorns, where we find God in our suffering. I'm Rachel Walters, and I'm honored to wait with you.