You Did Not Lose God. You Lost the Schedule.
I used to meet God at 4 a.m. every morning. And then my father died. And I could not find Him there anymore.
For years that early morning structure had been home. Bible open. Silence. Just me and the Lord before the world woke up. Before my children needed me. Before my husband. Before the emails, work and the demands of the day. I would crack open scripture and break bread with God like it was the most natural thing in the world. Because for me, it was.
I built that over years. Slowly. Intentionally. And it became the foundation everything else stood on.
Then 2023 came. And my father passed away.
The night before I received the news I had just hosted a Bible study with my team. It was one of those nights where the presence of God was thick in the room and everything felt aligned. I went to sleep full.
And then I woke up to the kind of news that empties you.
In one of the last conversations I had with my father, I told him I was coming to see him. I was excited. I had plans. And then God had other plans. And just like that he was gone.
His full story is not something I am ready to share yet. That grief is still being processed in places I have not found words for. But what I can tell you is what his passing did to the rhythm I had spent years building with God.
I could not open my Bible.
Not the way I used to. Not at 4 a.m. Not with that same hunger. Grief does not just take the person. It reaches back and rearranges everything you built while they were still here. The structure I had spent years constructing, the early mornings, the silence, the breaking of bread before the world woke up, it all suddenly felt unreachable.
I cried days. I cried nights. Some mornings I would get there. Most mornings I could not.
I eventually shifted to reading at night. And I do sit with the Lord. I do have time with Him. But I want to be honest with you about something I have not said publicly before.
I still miss those 4 a.m. encounters. Every single morning I do not get there feels like something I lost. And for a long time I carried a quiet guilt about that. Like I had failed the discipline I had built. Like God was disappointed in the version of me that could no longer show up the way she used to.
He was never impressed by my schedule. He was always after my heart.
But here is what He has been teaching me in this slower season.
He was never impressed by my schedule. He was always after my heart.
God is not sitting in heaven marking your attendance. He is not measuring your devotion by the hour you wake up or the number of chapters you read. What He is looking for is a heart that still turns toward Him even when the turning is harder than it used to be.
You are not failing God because your rhythm changed. Life changed it. Grief changed it. Survival changed it. And God, the One who created you, who saw the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end, already knew that was coming. He is not surprised. He is not keeping score. He is present in the new rhythm too, even when that rhythm feels unfamiliar and a little like failure.
This is for the mom who used to have a quiet morning with God before the house woke up and now she is lucky to whisper a prayer while the coffee brews. You have not lost your connection. You have just found a new meeting place.
This is for the person who used to journal pages and now can barely find three sentences. God reads what is between the lines too.
Consistency does not always look the same. God honors both.
Consistency does not always look the same. Sometimes it looks like 4 a.m. and an open Bible. Sometimes it looks like a five minute prayer in a parked car before you walk into work. God honors both.
What He was always after was never your performance. It was your presence.
Come back. Not to the schedule. To Him.
The door was never locked. He has been on the other side of it the whole time, not with disappointment, but with the kind of patience that only a Father who loves you completely could have.
Mercy Fakoya (PM)
Prophetic Teacher. Marketplace Strategist. The Praying Prophet.