The Man I Prayed For & The One I Loved

Chapter THREE

There are some prayers that change over time, not because the words are different, but because the person saying them no longer believes them the same way.

I realised that on Tuesday morning, standing at the small sink in my kitchen, watching the tap run longer than it needed to. The water was warm against my fingers, steady and indifferent, and for a moment I found myself staring at it like it might offer something—clarity, maybe, or even just distraction.

It didn’t.

I turned it off, wiped my hands slowly on a towel, and leaned back against the counter.

“God,” I started, the word feeling familiar and distant at the same time.

I paused.

Because the truth was, I didn’t know how to continue.

It hadn’t always been like this. There was a time when prayer came easily, when I didn’t second-guess whether anyone was listening, when I didn’t measure silence as something heavy or deliberate. But that was before time had passed in ways I hadn’t planned for.

Before waiting had stretched beyond what I understood as reasonable.

It had been almost ten years.

Ten years since I first began to pray intentionally about love, about marriage, about the kind of future my mother had spoken about with such quiet certainty. Back then, it felt like something I was preparing for, not something I was chasing. There was patience in it, a sense that when the time came, it would be obvious. Settled.

Right.

But ten years had a way of changing things.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just slowly, in ways you didn’t notice until you stopped and looked at where you were standing.

I exhaled and pushed myself away from the counter, reaching for my bag where I had left it on the chair. Work wouldn’t wait for clarity. It rarely did.

The hospital was already alive by the time I arrived.

There was a rhythm to places like that—an unspoken understanding that no matter what you were carrying personally, the work in front of you took priority. Lives moved in and out of your hands without pausing for your emotions, your questions, your doubts.

Sometimes, I was grateful for that.

It gave me somewhere to put my focus.

“Morning, Amara,” Leah called as I stepped onto the ward, her voice bright in a way that suggested she’d had more sleep than the rest of us.

“Morning,” I replied, tying my hair back as I moved toward the nurses’ station.

“Rough night?” she asked, glancing at me briefly before returning to the chart in front of her.

I almost said no.

It would have been easier.

But something about the question lingered just long enough for honesty to slip through.

“Didn’t sleep much,” I said instead.

She nodded, like that was explanation enough. In this place, it usually was.

We moved through the usual routine—handovers, patient updates, the quiet urgency of tasks that needed to be done without delay. It grounded me, forced my thoughts into something structured, something useful.

But even in the middle of it all, my mind refused to stay where I put it.

It drifted.

Back to Sunday.

Back to a voice that had sounded certain in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Back to a question that should have been simple, but wasn’t.

Will you be here next Sunday?

I adjusted the IV line for one of the patients, focusing on the small, precise movements of my hands.

“Careful,” I murmured softly, more to myself than to him. “Almost done.”

He smiled faintly, trusting without needing explanation.

I envied that.

That kind of ease.

That ability to accept what was in front of you without questioning what it might become.

By midday, the ward had settled into a quieter rhythm.

I stepped into the staff room, grateful for the brief pause, and sank into one of the chairs by the window. Outside, the sky hung low and grey, the kind that made the city feel smaller than it was.

I pulled out my phone without thinking.

No new messages.

I stared at the screen for a moment longer than necessary before locking it again.

It wasn’t like I expected anything.

Daniel didn’t seem like the type to reach out without reason. He wasn’t careless with his words. Even in the short conversation we’d had, there had been a kind of intention behind everything he said, like he didn’t speak just to fill space. That should have made it easier.

Instead, it made me more aware. More conscious of the possibility I was trying not to name.

I leaned back in the chair, closing my eyes briefly. Mummy said wait.

The thought came uninvited, but it settled with a familiarity I couldn’t ignore.

Wait for God to speak. I let out a quiet breath.

“I have been waiting,” I whispered under my breath, the words slipping out before I could stop them. “I have.”

Ten years.

Ten years of prayers that had started out hopeful and gradually become… quieter.

More cautious.

Less certain.

It wasn’t that I had stopped believing.

I just wasn’t sure what belief looked like anymore when it wasn’t met with clear answers.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling.

“What does waiting even mean now?” I murmured.

Because if waiting meant doing nothing, then I had done that.

If it meant trusting, I had tried.

If it meant patience, then surely ten years counted for something.

And yet, Silence.

“Amara?”

I turned at the sound of my name, blinking away the heaviness that had settled over my thoughts.

Leah stood at the doorway, one eyebrow raised slightly.

“You coming, or are you planning to live here now?”

I huffed out a small breath, pushing myself up from the chair. “Coming.”

Work pulled me back in, as it always did.

But something had shifted.

Not loudly.

Not enough for anyone else to notice.

Just enough for me to feel it.

Later that evening, as I walked home, the city felt quieter than usual. Or maybe it was just me.

The air carried a faint chill, brushing against my skin in a way that made me pull my coat tighter around myself. People passed by in a steady flow, each one wrapped up in their own world, their own destination.

I wondered, briefly, how many of them were waiting for something too.

And whether any of them felt like the waiting was starting to stretch into something else.

Something heavier.

I slowed my steps as I reached my street, my mind drifting again despite my efforts to keep it grounded.

What if this is how it starts?

The thought came softly. Uncertain.

What if Daniel was an answer?

The idea felt both hopeful and dangerous.

Because I had been here before—not in the same way, not with the same person, but close enough to recognise the pattern. Hope. Expectation.Then—

Disappointment.

I stopped just before my building, my hand resting lightly against the strap of my bag.

“No,” I said quietly, shaking my head once.

Not this time. Not without clarity.Not without something more than a feeling I couldn’t explain.

That night, I knelt again. Not out of habit. Not out of obligation. But because I didn’t know what else to do.

“God,” I said softly, my voice steadier than I felt.

“I’m trying to do this right.”

The words hung in the air, simple but honest.

“I don’t want to rush ahead of You. I don’t want to choose based on what feels good in the moment.”

I paused, my fingers tightening slightly against each other.

“But I don’t understand the silence.”

There it was. The truth I had been circling all day.

“I’ve been praying about this for years,” I continued, my voice quieter now. “I’ve been waiting. Or at least… I think I have.” A small breath left me.

“How do I know when it’s You speaking… and when it’s just me wanting something too much?” The question settled into the room, unanswered.

Again, I closed my eyes, letting the silence stretch without trying to fill it.

Because maybe that was part of waiting too. Not just speaking. But listening. Even when there was nothing to hear.

I stayed there longer than I had intended, long enough for the quiet in the room to settle into something I could no longer ignore. There was no sudden clarity, no gentle reassurance that I had taken the right step simply by asking. The silence remained, unchanged and familiar, like something I had carried for so long that it no longer felt like an interruption, but a constant presence in my life. When I finally rose to my feet, I did so slowly, aware of the weight that had followed me into that moment and refused to leave with me. It was not overwhelming, not enough to break me, but it was there in a way that could not be dismissed—a quiet reminder that whatever answers I was hoping for had not yet come.

I turned off the light and made my way to the bed, pulling the covers around me as the day began to settle in my body. My thoughts did not rush the way they used to; they moved more carefully now, as though even they had learned that certainty was not something that came easily anymore. I lay there for a while, staring into the darkness, aware of the question that had followed me through the day and refused to loosen its grip.

If waiting was still what God required of me, then I had to face the possibility that it might not come with the kind of clarity I had always expected. And perhaps that was the part I was still struggling to accept—not the waiting itself, but the silence that came with it, and the way it forced me to keep moving forward without the reassurance I had once believed would always be there.