Most people hate waiting. We try to avoid it, hack it, optimize it. We complain when a package takes more than two days to arrive or when our lunch detours five extra blocks. In a culture conditioned to expect everything now, waiting feels like failure.
But for DawnCheré Wilkerson, waiting is not a problem to solve — it’s a posture to embrace.
Her new book, Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait, is built on a radical premise: what if the in-between moments are the point? What if the slow, quiet, unanswered parts of life are where God actually does his deepest work?
“I had this message in my heart for over a decade,” Wilkerson said. “But I never felt like it was the right time to finish it.”
She speaks from experience. For eight years, she and her husband Rich — lead pastors of VOUS Church in Miami — struggled with infertility. All the while, they led a growing church, preached about breakthrough, and watched other people receive the very miracles they were still praying for.
“There came a point where I had to wrestle with the idea that I might never have a child,” she said. “But God made it clear that He was close to me. He met me in the wait. He healed me before the miracle ever came.”
Slow Burn doesn’t tie everything up with a bow. It doesn’t read like a spiritual success story. Instead, it leans into the tension — the ordinary, uncertain days most of us try to rush through. Wilkerson reframes those seasons as sacred ground.
Waiting, she believes, isn’t just a phase. It’s life.
That realization began when she started studying stories of faith in Scripture. She noticed something surprising: the great heroes of the Bible didn’t just wait — they died waiting. Hebrews 11 says they “died in faith,” still believing. They “greeted their inheritance from afar.” That verse, Wilkerson says, lit a fire in her.
“I realized I’m not just waiting on things in this life. I’m waiting for eternity,” she said. “My treasure is there. My home is there. And I can wave to it, even if I can’t fully touch it yet.”
In a culture that thrives on momentum and milestone moments, Wilkerson is pushing back.
“As soon as God answers one prayer, we just move into another season of waiting,” she said. “I don’t want to live for the highlight reel. I want to live with expectation day to day.”
And that means learning how to stay grounded when life doesn’t move at the pace we want it to. When asked what to do during a long wait, she doesn’t sugarcoat it: don’t isolate, she says. That’s where the lies creep in.
“Our instinct is to pull back,” Wilkerson explained. “We think if it’s not working out, we should disappear until it is. But isolation is where the enemy lies to us about who we are and what God is doing.”
Community, she says, is non-negotiable. It’s not just about having people to vent to. It’s about having people who reframe your perspective, speak life when you forget how, and stay when you’re tempted to quit. For Wilkerson, the people who prayed with her before the miracle were also the ones who got to celebrate on the other side.
Scripture was also an anchor. A lifelong journaler, she would copy verses into her notebook, sometimes through tears, sometimes with no resolution in sight. Isaiah 40:31 became a north star: those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…
What she didn’t know until later was that her uncle had written a song quoting that very verse when she was born — one she had sung for years.
“I had no idea I was praying that prayer my whole life: ‘Teach me, Lord, to wait,’” she said. “And that’s exactly what he did.”
Of course, not every story resolves the way we hope. Sometimes the answer doesn’t come. Sometimes it comes in a form you didn’t want. So what then?
“Relationship is built on trust,” she said. “So when God doesn’t respond how I expected, I have to ask: do I still trust him?”
For Wilkerson, the answer didn’t come in a vision or an emotional breakthrough — it came through people. Through the kind of community that doesn’t flinch at hard questions.
She remembers the moment she finally told her parents what she and Rich were going through. At first, she had kept it to herself, hoping to surprise them with good news. But a year into the struggle, she let them in. Their response shifted everything.
“They said, ‘This isn’t just about having a baby. This is about an eternal soul God is creating to come into history at a specific time. You can trust him.’”
It was one of those offhanded, holy moments that changes everything. “That one conversation gave me a bigger lens,” she said. “It reminded me there’s always more going on than we can see.”
The book’s release near Mother’s Day isn’t an accident. Wilkerson knows the grief that surfaces in those pews — the hidden ache of women walking into church with empty arms.
“You may feel like there’s a spotlight on your pain,” she said. “But that’s not what people see. You are loved. You are living with purpose. You are shining.”
She remembers preaching on Mother’s Day during her infertility journey and struggling with what to say. But she came to believe that anyone with the desire to love, nurture and build up others is already mothering in the Kingdom of God.
“You’re already planting seeds for a harvest,” she said. “God’s using you even in your waiting.”
That’s the tension Wilkerson invites readers into — not because she has the answers, but because she’s lived the questions. Slow Burn is not about mastering the wait. It’s about surrendering to it, trusting God with it, and finding that he’s already there.
“He met me in the wait,” she said. “And I wouldn’t take any of it back.”
Faith, she reminds us, is never about skipping to the good part. Sometimes, the good part is the wait.
