Delay or denial?

Somewhere along the way, I began to confuse delay with denial.

I looked at the calendar more than I looked at heaven.

Counted years. Measured milestones.

Compared what was to what I thought should have been by now.

And quietly, without ever saying it out loud, I started mourning the dream as if it were dead.

But today, in this fragile place between grief and hope, I feel the Lord whisper something gentle and firm all at once:

Just because it didn’t happen when you imagined it would, doesn’t mean your dream is dead.

It doesn’t mean you failed.

It doesn’t mean God forgot.

It doesn’t mean the promise expired.

It just means the dream didn’t obey my timeline.

And maybe that’s the part that hurts the most.

Not that the dream hasn’t come, but that I had to outlive the version of it I once clung to so tightly.

The one that felt safer because it was predictable.

The one I could explain to people without my voice trembling.

There’s a grief that comes with unmet timing.

A quiet, lonely grief.

The kind that doesn’t have a funeral but still requires mourning.

I’ve had to grieve the when without burying the what.

To loosen my grip on how I thought it would unfold, while still daring to believe it will.

Some dreams don’t die, they go dormant.

They wait beneath the soil, unseen, while deeper roots are being grown in you.

Roots strong enough to hold the weight of what’s coming.

And maybe, what felt like God withholding was actually God preparing.

Not punishing me with silence,

but protecting me from receiving too soon what would have crushed me then.

I’m not throwing the dream away.

I’m laying it back at His feet—tear-soaked, time-worn, but still breathing.

I’m learning that resurrection doesn’t always come on schedule.

Sometimes it comes after you’ve cried enough to stop striving, after hope has been refined from entitlement into trust.

And if this season has taught me anything, it’s this: God is not intimidated by how long it’s taken.

He is not rushed by my ache.

He is not offended by my questions.

He is faithful—even here.

So I will keep believing, even if my hands shake.

I will keep waiting, even when my heart is tired.

I will keep the dream,

not as a demand,

but as a prayer.

Because timing delayed is not promise denied.

And the dream God planted

is still alive.