God, If You Can, Why Won't You?

I haven't written in over a year.

Not because I didn't have anything to say.

Because I had too much to say.

Because I couldn't make sense of it myself.

I've opened this page dozens of times over the last year.

I'd write a paragraph, stare at it, delete it, and close my laptop.

I convinced myself the internet didn't need another stay-at-home mom processing her feelings.

I also knew my family would read it.

I knew there would be backlash.

The comments.

The guilt.

The accusations.

And after spending most of my life trying to keep the peace, silence felt easier than honesty.

So I stopped writing.

Not because life got quiet.

But because it got really loud.

I spent the last year just trying to survive.

Trying to cling to the hem of Jesus while loving my little family.

Trying to be the mom Luci deserves while also realizing I have no idea how to do that.

Because motherhood has this way of introducing you to every broken place inside yourself.

I thought I was signing up to raise a little girl.

Instead, I found myself raising her while God was slowly exposing the little girl still living inside me.

Two years ago, I prayed a prayer that changed everything.

"God... help me know You more. Help me become a better wife, a better mom, a better friend. Help me to look more like Jesus."

I wanted a different life.

I wanted less trauma and more joy.

More peace.

More freedom.

I didn't feel settled or content.

I knew God could do that.

I'd read the stories.

I'd seen lives transformed.

I wanted mine transformed too.

What I wasn't expecting...

was that He would begin stripping away every survival mechanism I had spent almost forty years building.

The people pleasing.

The hypervigilance.

The control. (!)

The constant need to anticipate everyone else's emotions.

The walls.

The independence.

The things that helped me survive my childhood...

were now keeping me from becoming the woman He was calling me to be.

And underneath all of that...

was one prayer I'd been praying for years.

God, heal my family.

Not my finances.

Not my circumstances.

My family.

Heal the people I love.

Pursue them.

Soften their hearts.

Restore what has been broken.

Stop generations of hurt from continuing.

I remember thinking...

This has to be Your will too.

Because that's who You are.

So...

if You can...

why won't You?

This very question had me face some really hard truths about my faith.

He brought me to the edge of what I actually believed about His character.

He stripped me all the way down to my guts and made me wrestle with who I believed Him to be.

Not my church attendance.

Not my Bible knowledge.

Not whether I believed He existed.

Not who I'd been taught He was.

Not who I could quote Scripture said He was.

Who I believed He was when my own story didn't make sense.

And if I'm honest...

I didn't like what I found.

Because underneath years of following Jesus...

was a little girl who didn't trust Him.

Not because I didn't think He was powerful.

Because I couldn't understand why He hadn't protected me.

Why did You allow the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by both of my parents? The neglect after it all exploded.

If You could have stopped it...

why didn't You?

If You loved me...

why didn't You?

If You hated what happened...

why didn't You stop it?

And if You didn't then...

why would I trust You to restore my family now?

Why would I trust You to soften hearts?

Why would I trust You to pursue the people I love?

I wasn't asking for the wrong things.

I was praying what felt like the right prayer.

I truly believed it would speak to God's heart because... doesn't it already?

Doesn't He desire reconciliation?

Doesn't He leave the ninety-nine?

Doesn't He make dead things come alive?

I knew He could.

So somewhere along the way...

I quietly believed that because He could...

He would.

And when He didn't...

I was confused.

Angry. Oh so angry.

Because nobody really talks about what happens when you pray prayers that seem so aligned with God's heart...

and He answers differently than you expected.

Then one day...

God prompted me to change the question.

Not with an audible voice.

Not with some dramatic revelation.

Just a quiet nudge.

"Victoria... instead of asking why... ask where."

Where were You?

If You weren't where I wanted You...

show me where You were.

And He did.

One face at a time.

An elementary school teacher who took me under her wing.

An SRO who yanked me out of trouble.

A boss who listened to Holy Spirit and talked to me about God.

A student's unexpected kindness that nudged me back toward church.

A friend who let me tell the truth about my childhood without trying to fix me.

The people who kept showing up.

People who had absolutely no idea they were becoming part of God's answer to a question I hadn't even learned to ask yet.

It was like a timeline of faces throughout my life.

And then there was the table.

Ten years ago, God gave me an image I have carried ever since.

A long table, filled with people; community, love, belonging.

At the time, I was certain I knew what it meant.

My family.

All of us together.

The broken relationships healed.

The tension gone.

The people I loved sitting in one room, sharing a meal, laughing, choosing one another.

I thought the table was a promise of reconciliation.

It is part of why we bought this house.

I saw the big dining room and imagined holidays. Long dinners. Extra chairs pulled in. My family gathered around it.

I thought God was showing me what He was going to restore.

And maybe He was.

I just assumed I knew who would be sitting there.

That is the part I am still grieving.

Because the table I prayed would hold the family I came from, has instead held the family God brought to me.

Women from church.

Friends who became sisters.

Open Bibles.

Coffee cups.

Tears.

Laughter.

Hard conversations.

Prayers prayed when I had no words left.

Homeschooling Luci.

Baking and cooking with her.

For years, I thought the table would be the place where God healed my biological family.

Instead, it became the place where He showed me I was not without one.

And maybe that is why it feels so holy to me now.

My table became my altar.

Not because everything I prayed for happened there.

But because that is where I finally began to see what God had been doing all along.

He was gathering.

He was restoring.

He was building a family.

It just looked different than the one I had imagined.

And I finally realized that while I had been asking,

"God, why won't You pursue the people I love?"

He gently whispered...

"Victoria... this is how I've been pursuing you."

Not with one dramatic miracle.

But through people.

Ordinary people.

Faithful people.

People who simply kept saying yes when God nudged them.

One conversation.

One invitation.

One meal.

One hug.

One prayer.

One act of obedience at a time.

I had spent years looking for God in one place.

Meanwhile...

He had been surrounding me with Himself the entire time.

Do I still wish my family was reconciled?

With every fiber of my being.

Do I still pray for softened hearts?

Every single day.

Do I still wonder why some prayers remain unanswered?

Absolutely.

I don't have those answers.

Maybe I never will.

But I no longer measure God's presence by one unanswered prayer.

I measure it by His relentless pursuit of me.

And now...

I know He's asking me to become one of those people for someone else.

To send the text.

To make the coffee.

To invite the woman who keeps coming to mind.

To open my table.

To tell my story of HOW God has pursued me.

To point people toward Jesus.

Through ordinary, faithful people who simply say yes.

So if you're in a season where all you can ask is...

"Why?"

Can I encourage you to ask a different question?

Not because your "why" doesn't matter.

It does.

God can handle it.

But maybe, when you're ready...

Ask Him this instead.

"Where were You?"

And then be still long enough to listen.