Originally published at https://rootedbygraceteam.substack.com
If you’re new here: This story is part of our series The Letter That God Answered a real-life love story about faith, waiting, and the way God writes miracles into ordinary lives. You can start from Part 1: The Letter to discover where it all began.
In the years after I wrote that letter to God, life kept unfolding in ways I couldn’t understand. I thought that when you prayed with all your heart, God would answer quickly. But sometimes His silence is His way of preparing you. And I didn’t know it then, but that’s exactly what He was doing, preparing me.
Those years were marked by heartbreak after heartbreak. I kept meeting people I was so sure were the one but the only problem was: they neither knew it, nor felt the same way. I was hurt in ways no girl at that age - or any age - should ever experience. I fell in love with people who used my feelings to get closer to my cousins or friends, and because I didn’t know how to set boundaries, I let them break my heart again and again, sometimes even with a smile on my face.
Every heartbreak felt like a proof that something was wrong with me…
I started to believe I was too much. Too emotional, too deep, too hopeful. Or maybe I just not enough. Not pretty enough, not interesting enough, not lovable enough.
Each rejection left a bruise that went deeper than I let anyone see. I’d smile, pretend to be fine, but every night I cried quietly, wondering if love just wasn’t written in my story. Still, something deep inside me refused to die. There was this small, stubborn seed of faith that whispered, God has something different for you.
People laughed at me for still having hope. Some called me naïve; others told me to stop reading the books I loved and start living in the “real world”, a world where some people get to be loved, and others don’t. My grandmother, in her own way of loving me, once said: “You’ll probably die alone, because no man will accept a girl like you, with all your ideas, your independence, and your dreams of traveling the world.”
She wasn’t the only one who thought like that, she was just the one who put it into words.
My answer? “That’s okay, Grandma. If I have to die alone, I will. But I won’t give up what’s valuable to me just to fit into someone else’s life.”.
It wasn’t pride. It was conviction, a kind of quiet promise I made to myself and to God. Because I knew what I had asked for in that letter wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t selfish. It was sacred. But even sacred dreams can feel heavy when they seem delayed.
The Breaking Point
Years passed. I focused on my studies, made friends, lived my life as best as I could, but love still lingered in the back of my mind. I met someone in university once, a kind and intelligent boy. We talked a lot, shared laughs, and I started to believe maybe, just maybe, this was what I had prayed for.
When I finally opened my heart, he gently rejected me. And though he didn’t mean to hurt me, his words echoed louder than any before. It felt like all the rejection I had faced throughout my life had gathered into his words, and the weight of it all became too heavy to bear. And I cried the whole way home.
That day my mother sat beside me, held my hand, and tried, in her own way, to comfort me: “You need to wait on God, my love. He knows what He’s doing. When it’s time, it will happen.”. I wanted to believe her, but part of me wondered if maybe my letter had been lost somewhere between earth and heaven.
The Doctor and the Doorway
By the time a few more years passed, I was completely worn down, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. Depression had become a quiet companion I didn’t know how to shake off. My mother, always the fighter, finally said: “Enough. You need help.”. So she took me to a doctor.
I remember sitting in that office, my eyes swollen from crying, telling him I didn’t see any meaning in life anymore. I had finished university, but I couldn’t find a job. I felt rejected by people, by opportunities, by God.
The doctor listened for a long time. And then, instead of writing a prescription right away, he said something that caught me off guard: “You have time, and that’s a gift. Use it for something that gives you life. Learn something new. Do something that sparks joy in you again.”
I laughed bitterly: “I’ve always wanted to learn English, but as I’m not good at anything…”
He smiled, that kind of smile that feels like light in a dark room. “Then start there,” he said. “You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to begin. There are free apps now, download one, start today. You never know what doors it might open.”
It didn’t sound anything like what you would expect to hear from a doctor. But that day, I went home, and for the first time in a long while, I felt like trying again.
I searched for apps, downloaded several, and started practicing. At first, it felt hopeless, I barely understood anything, and many of the people in those apps weren’t really there to learn or teach. I was about to delete it all and give up again.
But then I received a message.
A kind, polite message from a boy all the way from Turkey.
He said he was an English teacher.
He told me one of his students had recommended the app so he could practice French.
And somehow, in that sea of strange messages, this one felt different.
I didn’t know it then, but that message was the first line in a new chapter. The beginning of how God would turn a simple suggestion from a doctor into the doorway to a miracle…
With grace and love,
Brenda
Next Week: Part 3 — The Message
What began as a simple chat to practice English became the spark of something extraordinary. Two strangers, two distant world, and a connection only God could have written.
PS.: I want to keep this series completely free so every love-lover can have a little dose of hope and faith every week. But if you’d like to support the writing of this series, you can do so by buying me a mocha. May God bless you.