What do you do when the miracle you’ve prayed for never comes?

In this honest and powerful episode of the Collide Podcast, we sit down with Rachel Wojo to talk about praying through heartbreak, anger, and unimaginable loss. After walking through 22 years of caring for her daughter Taylor, who suffered from a rare metabolic disorder known as Sanfilippo syndrome, Rachel faced every parent’s worst fear—and found that God was still present in the pain.

She shares about the years of pleading with God for healing, and the raw anger she brought to Him in prayer. Whether you’re navigating grief, wrestling with unanswered prayers, or wondering if God is still good in the middle of your circumstances, this episode will remind you that your prayers are not in vain—and that sometimes the miracle is a transformed heart.

Meet Rachel Wojo

Rachel Wojo is a bestselling author, speaker, and host of Untangling Prayer Podcast. After caring for her daughter Taylor for 22 years through a rare degenerative disorder, Rachel became passionate about helping others experience God’s presence in suffering. Through her new book Desperate Prayers, she encourages women to bring every emotion—anger, confusion, heartbreak—honestly before the Lord. Her story is a powerful testimony of faith refined through grief.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why it’s okay to bring your anger and “why” questions to God
• How God often changes our hearts even when He doesn’t change our circumstances
• What it looks like to experience a miracle that doesn’t match your expectations
• How helping others in their pain can actually accelerate your own healing

How This Episode Will Encourage You

If you’ve ever felt disappointed by God… if grief catches you off guard in the middle of Target… if you’re afraid you’ll forget how much you need Him when life feels “good” again, this conversation will gently call you back to truth.

You’ll be reminded that suffering can tether you to Jesus, that desperate prayers are an invitation into deeper intimacy, and that nothing—not height, depth, grief, or unanswered prayers—can separate you from the love of God.

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Hey there. Welcome to the Collide Podcast. This is Willow Weston. I'm so glad you hopped on.

I just love being able to hand you interviews with people who are experiencing God showing up, colliding with their lives and bringing hope and help and healing in the midst of whatever they have going on. It reminds us that he can do the same in our lives and in our stories. And so today is a conversation that I just had with Rachel Wojo.

What a cool last name. Wojo. I just. I just want to keep saying Wojo. And she is an author, a speaker, a podcaster. She has a blog, all the things.

But mostly today, what we talked about was her story. And she's had this incredibly painful story.

And yet she holds up this amazing faith and belief that God is good, even though she didn't get her miracle. And I don't know if you ever feel like I'm not getting my prayers answered, I'm not getting my miracle.

The story isn't going the way I want the story to go. I know I do. And so her story will give you hope in the midst of yours. Take a listen. Rachel, it's so good to have you on the Collide Podcast.

You are coming out with this new book, Desperate Prayers.

And my guess is that there was a day where you hoped that that would not be a story that you would be able to write, because nobody wants to have to pray desperate prayers. And so tell us how. How this came to be.

How this came to be a passion of yours that you wanted to help people embrace the power of prayer in life's darkest moments.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate this question just right out of the gate, because I do believe that there are a lot of people who struggle with their prayer lives and understanding why God isn't answering their prayers the way they want him to, or why their situation even exists to begin with. And so, as I learned over the course of many years, 22 years, I had a special needs daughter who was diagnosed with a rare metabolic disorder.

And that disorder caused her to be neurologically impaired to the point to where she would gradually lose every skill that she ever had.

So she went from a beautiful, bubbly little girl with pigtails and a personality bigger than the moon to becoming bedridden and having to have everything done for her. And over the course of that 22 years, I surely prayed a lot of desperate prayers. And my number one prayer was that I would.

That God would not let all of that be in vain. All of that suffering, all of that heartache that it would not be in vain, that somehow he would use it for his glory.

And so that was really the heart behind why I wrote a book called Desperate Prayers. Because I believe there are a lot of people who need to understand that their prayers are not in vain.

So you. You gave birth to your daughter, Taylor. Did you know at birth that she was going to have struggles and. And hardship?

We did not. It was a long time ago before people really did a ton of. Of prenatal testing. And even when she was born, there were.

There was normal newborn testing screening that was done. And she did show on her screening that she had some type of hearing deficiency. But mostly we were told, well, she.

She was born emergency C section, and she lost oxygen, so she probably will have some developmental delays. And we believed that story for about three years. And then one day, I asked her to put her socks on, which she had done many, many times before.

And I came back to her sitting on the carpet, staring at her socks. And I prompted her again, taylor, put your socks on, and walked away.

And when I came back, she looked at me and she looked at the socks, and I realized that she did not know how to put her socks on anymore. And it was one of those moments as a mother where I just immediately said, something more is wrong than what they've been telling us.

And we began to search for deeper answers.

And where did that journey lead you?

Well, eventually, after knocking on many doors for a long time, as far as all of the medical doors and the developmental delay specialists, we finally arrived at a specialist who was renowned across the state. And she said, I don't know what is wrong with your daughter, but I do think we can find out.

And she outlined, after spending two hours with us, she outlined a series of testing that would eliminate 15 possible diagnoses.

And it was not until the very last test of the 15, that we discovered through just a simple urinalysis, that she had this rare metabolic disorder, mucopolysaccharidosis type 3B. It's also known as Sanfilippo syndrome. And as I shared earlier, it is a gradual neurological decline. It's often called a childhood Alzheimer's.

So throughout this entire time, obviously, this is your baby. And. And you.

I. I can imagine that you were coming to the Lord and begging on behalf of your baby, and yet you were experiencing bad news after bad news. How. How did that look for you as far as these desperate prayers that you were praying in your own life?

Well, I'll just be honest. I was mad I was so mad at God.

And just like many of the people listening right now probably are saying, yeah, I'm pretty ticked God right now because it just doesn't seem fair or it doesn't seem right. And I had all of those why questions that I took to the Lord in prayer. Why did you create her with this disease? Why is there no cure?

Why is there no treatment? Why are we going through this roller coaster of emotions in dealing with this?

And so I wish I could tell you that I just had it all tied up in a nice little box with a neat little bow, but I did not. It was very messy. And the only thing that I can tell you that I did do right was I did not give up on my conversations with God.

I continued to take all of my anger, my frustration, my emotion, my issues, as well as Taylor's issues to the Lord. And it created this dependency that I couldn't live without then. So I think that answers your question.

Why didn't you give up?

You know, I think it was just because I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know where else to turn. I thought God as. As our Creator, if you're not in charge, then who is in charge?

And so I just would not give up on pursuing him and trying to figure out, are you real or are you not? Is this the faith of my parents that I'm believing all these years, or is it a faith of my own?

And I discovered through that honest conversation that God's spirit began to speak to my spirit. And I started to realize through his word, through his people, through circumstances, that he was indeed alive and well and working in our lives.

And there were just parts of this story that I couldn't understand. But eventually I had to come to realize that there will always be things on this planet that we can't wrap our heads around.

And eternity holds those answers. But until then, we get to choose whether or not we believe and put our trust in our Heavenly Father and His plan.

I think a lot of times our hope and belief and faith in God are tied directly to how the circumstance is going. So if we pray and pray and pray and we don't get the answers, we don't get the circumstances that we're begging for and pleading for.

We start to give up on the reality that. That God is alive and well.

What made you continue to hold on to the fact though your circumstances weren't changing, your God was still working on behalf of you and your daughter for your good?

Yeah. Even when our circumstances haven't changed. What I realized was that my heart was changing.

And really that's the truth of what God wants in our lives. He's not after changing circumstances nearly as much as he's after changing, changing hearts.

And so that could be our own heart, or it could be he's weaving a story between our lives and intersecting it with other people. So that the heart change is transformational across multiple souls, multiple individuals.

And that's what I found to be true in continuing to pursue him. It was. I started to see not only how he was working in our lives, but how he was working in the lives of other people.

And that increased my faith to know that even if my circumstances weren't changing, he was still there, he was still available, and he was still working a miracle. The miracle just didn't look like what I wanted it to look like.

And that's a hard, hard thing when your miracle doesn't come the way you're asking God to make it come.

When you say that, Rachel, what. What was the miracle that he was working?

I think the miracle that I wanted was Taylor's healing on this planet. I wanted to see her happy and whole. I wanted to see her play kickball, and I wanted to see her sing in the choir.

I wanted to see her graduate from school. And right now, if she were living, she would be 29 years old. Her birthday was on Sunday and she celebrated in heaven, obviously.

And so at 29, maybe she'd be getting married or maybe she would be having her first child. It's hard to imagine letting go of all those dreams that you have for your child.

So the miracle, I think the bigger miracle was the different kind of person I became through that experience. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I grew up in a very legalistic environment where my faith was a bit of a checkoff list.

Your to do's and your not to do's, and this is the way you lived your life. And everything was very clean and black and white.

And the older I became, the more I realized that life really isn't as black and white as we think it is.

And so I saw in my own life a heart transformation of beginning to see other people with different eyes than what I had before, that being less judgmental and more heart oriented, being able to have an intuition for when people were in pain, when they needed prayer, when they needed support in a way that I really didn't see before, that I was quite judgmental in, in my thinking without even knowing it. It was simply because I had never been exp. Consistent, ongoing suffering before.

It's really interesting to me that you're not conveying a message or writing a book about, hey, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray all the time. Pray without seizing. Eventually you're going to get the outcome you want. That's not the message. I think you're inviting us into something deeper.

The story didn't go the way that you wanted it to go. And I think I resonate with that in my own life for completely different reasons.

Where my whole life I prayed and prayed and prayed that my mom would be free of her addiction. And I didn't get my prayer, and she passed away.

And I think the invitation that you're laying out for us, so many of us can resonate with it because we want to believe God is alive and well and working for good on our behalf, and yet we have circumstances that just suck. And I don't have a better way to say it like they do. And they're not. They're not being written the way we wanted them to go.

And you're inviting us to seek the Lord anyway and trust that he's changing us and changing our hearts and that He. He's here and that there's something bigger. And I think that's a.

A deep invitation for people who are steeped in it right now, though, where they are, they're not in the place that you've arrived. They're in that mad place of, like, where are you, God? What's your advice for them?

Just to continue seeking him and taking every emotion to him, whether it's anger, frustration. That is really the message of this book is to continually go before him, make it a habit.

Because what happens is he transforms our hearts and minds to experience him on a deeper level. And then it develops such a craving that we want. We want the closeness to his presence all the time.

We start to experience who he is and his character and his mercy and grace. And we see situations, and it's.

It's very easy to want to tie it up in one or two sentences or a paragraph, but the truth is, this is a journey that I lived over 22 years. So that person who is angry. I don't want you to think that one day I just woke up and I wasn't angry anymore.

I mean, even when Taylor was on her deathbed suffering, I said to the Lord, about two weeks before she passed away, I said, God, you don't know what it's like to watch your child suffer and die. And I was so frustrated. And I'm praying to him, but they weren't happy words. And immediately in my spirit, I heard him say back to me, oh, yes, I do.

I watched my son suffer and die for you.

And all of a sudden, John 3:16, a verse that I had heard a bazillion times over and I had memorized as a child, became so real to me because I recognized that for God so loved the world that he gave. And in that frustrating moment, I wasn't willing to give my child over to God. But he sacrificed his son for me.

And the amount of love that he has for us just overwhelmed me in that moment because I had a realization that God really does love me. And his arms are big enough to hold us in our pain.

One of the things that I think is so beautiful is it sounds like months before Taylor, you say she graduated to heaven, which I love. In the months before that, you began writing letters to her because she could no longer communicate. Can you tell us about those letters?

I think journaling to a child who cannot comprehend necessarily what you're saying, you know, we had no idea how much comprehension Taylor had. And so I have always used writing as a way to process and. And document. And so that is what I chose to do during that season.

I would write the letter after she went to sleep and then typically read the letter to her the next day or a few hours later. I think it was helpful for me to get my thoughts down in the writing.

And then it was also helpful, I believe, for her to hear more of my voice, because it could have been easy to get in the habit of not talking to her since she couldn't talk back. And I really wanted to be able to keep an open line of communication and just try to creatively find a way to do that.

That's such a beautiful thing that you got to experience together. Are you ever. Do you ever sit back and think about the love that you have for Taylor and connect that to the love the Father has for you?

Ever blown away by this parental love?

Well, just imagine if we as parents can love our children so much that we would want to lay down our lives for them. That gives us just a little bit of a glimpse of how much our Father loves us.

But then when you look at, would I lay my child's life down for someone else? No, I would not. And God loved us so much that he gave his only son, Jesus for us.

We can't even begin to wrap our heads around the love that he has for us. And when we read in Scripture you know, neither height nor depth nor anything can separate us from the love of God. And so I just.

Just can't really wrap my head around that. It is so beyond who I am as a person. But I do know that God has shown that love to me in many ways.

And the more you experience that, the more you want to experience it.

I think that's the deep invitation that we have in suffering, is that not only does it produce perseverance, but it produces a sense of God's presence that we may not otherwise be able to comprehend or understand. And that moment drives us to want to be dependent on God all the time.

My biggest fear when Taylor passed away, one of my biggest fears was that she would. I would forget how much I needed the Lord. I would forget how much I needed Jesus because she kept me tethered to Jesus. She kept me in prayer.

Her circumstances kept me on my knees. And so when she was gone, I thought, I'll forget.

Because when you read in Scripture over and over again, what happened after people received miracles or after they experienced a change in their lives, they went about their merry way. And after a little time passed, they forgot. And I did not want to forget how much I needed the Lord. So I continued to foster that time with Him.

And I think that is what I would encourage anyone who's listening to do as well. Maybe you are on the other side of your urgent situation or your horrible circumstance, and some time has passed.

It's easy to become complacent and not pursue God and run after him like you did when things were hard.

And that's one of the challenges of desperate prayers, is that our prayers would be desperate all the time, that we would always long for God to do the miracles that we need in our lives and the miracles that we necessarily don't even know that we need in our lives.

We just were talking about this the other day at family dinner. My husband and son and my daughter doesn't live near right now, she's in college. But at family dinner, we were talking about this.

My son was bringing up. He's 22, and he's like, how do.

How do I stay in that place of, like, needing God and not getting to a place where, oh, life is good, circumstances are good, I don't need God. And I was like, raising my hand like, I know, I know. Just go hang out with someone who's desperate.

Like, when we are going to the places Jesus goes, and we're hanging out with the poor and the marginalized and the hurting and the Suffering. You never stop praying desperate prayers.

You never lose sight of needing God because you're literally seeing people every single day who are in the trenches, and they need the Lord. And I think it's.

It's when we get in good circumstances and we stop also serving and blessing and loving people who are in desperate circumstances that we forget this need that we actually all have, because we all are in desperate need. But our circumstances lie to us.

They tell us either, hey, your circumstances are great, you don't need God, or, hey, your circumstances suck, and that means God doesn't love you. Right? Like, we base everything on how. How our circumstances are going, and. And our circumstances lie.

So I love that you're reminding us to remember the truth. And the truth is that God loves us with a love that's incomprehensible.

And I know you believe that, and you've lived that, and the Lord has made sure to tell you that personally. Rachel. And you're telling us.

I'm curious, in that truth and in that faith that you have, do you ever just have a Wednesday where your grief surprises you? Like, you're in the middle of the grocery store or you see something, you're here, something, all of a sudden, the.

The grief just kind of like, jolts you?

Absolutely. And I'm sure you've experienced that, but I'll give a. A tangible example.

In about maybe two or three more weeks, there will be something that happens in Target every fall, and that is the footed pajamas come out. You know, the ones with the zipper all the way at the front.

And that was one of Taylor's big things that she wore all the time for years, was footy pajamas.

And every time, every year, when I walk in the store and I see them hanging there, there's just this overwhelming feeling of longing to be able to just zip those pajamas up one more time or snuggle up in the bed with her in those pajamas. So I. I think that as long as we are living human beings in the flesh that God put us in, you know, we are.

But Clay Bible says so as long as we're in this flesh, we will have those moments where grief is overwhelming, and we just. We just have to say, God, I don't. I don't know what to do with this. But I am bringing it to you because I can't process this on my own.

I think that's sometimes what you just said about helping hurting people and staying close to hurting people so that we don't lose the ability to see that even though our Own circumstances may be fine. Others are suffering. And I really believe that the lie that the enemy tells us is that if we're hurting, we can't help anyone else.

We have to heal before we can help someone else. And what I found to be true is the exact opposite, that when we're helping others, it actually speeds our healing.

It actually accelerates our healing. It's what the Bible promises in Isaiah, that then your light will break forth like the dawn.

And so when we help others in their suffering and in their hurting, then that's when we actually experience the healing in ourselves. So I don't know if that sparks anyone today or not, but I just really believe it's important to know that you can. You don't have to wait until.

In that grief. In those moments of grief, I guess where I was going is that what I found.

Something that's very practically helpful is to find someone else in need and help them. When that grief hits me, I will look for someone else that I can help. And it can be super small. You know, here's an example of that.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I were in a restaurant. We walked in, there was a little girl with down syndrome standing there, and she had her money in her hand, dollar bills.

There was a huge gumball machine, and she really wanted a gumball. And her dad was trying to explain to her, she kept saying, but it's my money. She had her own money.

She wanted to spend it, but she needed quarters instead of a dollar bill.

Well, there was no cash register there, so someone from the desk was going to have to go take her $1 bill back and go back to the kitchen or wherever and make the change and bring it back up. And it was taking a very long time, you know, several minutes. And in the meantime, she's so frustrated and he's trying to talk her off the ledge.

And my husband didn't even really notice any of this happening. But when I walked in, I saw her immediately. I knew immediately.

So I started opening my wallet, dug out the four quarters, took it over to the mom and said, do you need this? And she almost started crying. She said, boy, do we ever need this. Such a simple little way to bless someone else, to see the need and fill it.

And the truth of the situation was that I probably received more encouragement from that than they did. And so I.

Maybe that will give someone an idea that sparks them today where, you know, I know you're all about colliding on this podcast, and I think this is where Our everyday circumstances can collide with our faith when we have our eyes open to the people who are hurting, who are right in front of us, and we just do that one small thing that can bless them.

Absolutely. And I. I so resonate with your story, but again, for different reasons. I mean, I think because I have experienced pain and wounds.

I have experienced the help and healing of Jesus. I'm not whole, but I have a compassion that I wouldn't have had I not experienced the things I've experienced.

And so when I see someone who's hurting or wounded, the Lord has enabled me with the Spirit to be able to enter into people's stories, and he can use my story to help someone else in their story. And I see him doing that with you, and I see you allowing it.

I think part of it is we have to allow it instead of believing, oh, I have to no longer be grieving before I can talk to someone else in grief. That's actually not true.

Like, the power of you sharing your story, even when your grief hits you in target every fall, is you saying to other women, you're not alone and that it's hard and you're reminding them of the truth to take it back to the Lord, take all those emotions and feelings and all that grief back to the Lord that He's good and that he loves you. And we need other people who can say, hey, you're not alone. I've walked. This. This is hard. Like, we need that for each other.

And I love that you're using your pain for purpose, which is such a beautiful thing. And the Lord used his pain for purpose. Right? Isaiah tells us, by his wounds we are healed, that actually his wounds created healing for us.

And I think in a lot of ways, he does the same with our pain and our wounds. He uses it to help heal other people. And if we have to go through pain, which I think we all do, we might as well purpose it while.

While we're there, because what else are we gonna do with it? And you're doing that, and I love that so much.

I know there's women listening who are gonna want to learn more from you, hear more about your story, and maybe women who are agonizing over some desperate circumstances, and those circumstances are lying to them and they want some hope. How can they follow in your message?

Sure. Thank you for asking. I think one of the easiest ways to connect is@rachelwojo.com you'll find all sorts of resources and things there.

But I think specifically for this message, I created A class that's called how to be a prayer warrior for your family in dark times. And the class is really simple.

It's.

It's free. You'll find it at the very top of the page@desperate prayers.com. it just says free prayer class@desperate prayers.com.

and I think that we've had thousands of women go through that class already. I found it to be so helpful and I just invite anyone who's struggling to go there and take the free prayer class today.

Rachel, thank you so much for being with us today.

My privilege. Thank you for having me. May the Lord bless you and your ministry. Your heart is so clear and I just thank you for it.

Thank you, Rachel.

Hey, friend, I want to encourage you if that episode with Rachel gave you some strength to stand on some faith, faith to grasp, some hope to hold on to.

Do you have a friend who is in a tough circumstance who's praying desperate prayers or is in a desperate circumstance and maybe her circumstances are lying to her? I invite you. One way that you can be purpose today and be used to impact other people is just simply share this episode.

Just literally copy and send this link over. Share it with someone who needs to hear it. Friend. You can hand out hope and help just by doing that.

And if you're in a place where your circumstances are lying to you today and they're telling you that God is not real, that God is not good, that God does not love you, they're telling you lies about God and they're telling you lies about yourself. That somehow you're not worthy, that somehow you messed up, that somehow you deserve a learning lesson.

That somehow God sees everybody else, but he doesn't see you. I'm here to tell you that those are lies. Your circumstances aren't the truth. God is the truth.

And God makes it so very clear that there is nothing that can separate you from him. That he would do anything for you, that he would lay down his life for you. That's how much you mean to him.

Your circumstances don't determine how God feels about you. God already knows how he feels about you.

And how he feels about you does not change even when your circumstances do so hold on to the unwavering truth that Jesus Christ loves you, died for you, would do anything for you, and finds you worthy of relationship and wants nothing more than to be close to you.

So cling to him even in the heart, even when you aren't feeling like he's answering your prayers, even when you're in the chapter, you don't want to be in. Hold on to him and trust in him. And keep colliding, friend. We'll catch you next week.