I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working

by Shauna Niequist

Everything has changed and also you still have work to do and dirty dishes in the sink, and where your future used to be, now there’s a blank nothingness and you realize you have to build a new life. You have to paint the canvas of your future, because it used to be such a well-developed, very specific image and now it is blank. This is terrifying. At some point—I promise—it will be a tiny bit exciting, this blankness. But right now, you might be crying in church the same way I have dozens of times. You’re not alone. We never are.

The pain and isolation are very real, and the tears streaming down your face are valuable, sacred, holy. If anyone tries to tell you that walking away from a church you’ve loved or a tradition you’ve loved or a community of faith you’ve loved is an easy thing to do, they’re lying to you. For me, it felt surgical. Sometimes it still does.

When I turned forty, the world as I understood it seemed strong. Stable. Impenetrable. Safe. I felt I was standing on solid ground, built over years and decades, a firm foundation of relationships and shared understandings, institutions I believed in and friendships and family relationships that kept me safe.

wrapped all that around my shoulders like a blanket. I had no earthly idea that the blanket would unravel so thoroughly and so painfully. It did not feel exhilarating or at all like freedom. It felt like I would die, like I’d been cut off from oxygen and had seconds, not minutes.

Whenever possible, walk out of your way for a few minutes and take a few deep breaths somewhere beautiful—whether that’s a forest clearing or a French bakery or a path through a prairie or a cobblestone street. Take the long way sometimes, reveling in the discovery of beauty, noticing everything you can—what it smells like and the slant of the light and how the sounds remind you of recess or Rome or Grand Rapids.