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

by Shauna Niequist

Self-compassion is letting yourself off the hook, letting yourself be human and flawed and also amazing. It’s giving yourself credit for showing up instead of beating yourself up for taking so long to get there.

We find the courage to change when we feel loved. It unlocks our ability to move forward and grow.

Self-compassion is learning to say, I guess I haven’t learned that yet.

profoundly lonely. I still believe in God—in his goodness especially. In the centrality of forgiveness, confession, prayer. I believe he is present in our lives, that he offers comfort and wisdom, that the way of Christ is the best possible way to live. I still believe in religion as a meaningful way to gather and organize our lives, although I don’t believe it’s a stand-in for emotional health or self-awareness or character, and I don’t believe a devoutly religious person is necessarily any of those other important things. I’ve shed many illusions. But I am still deeply devout, possibly more than ever. Christ has not failed me.

you don’t need nearly as many people as you might think.

I believe in seeking out beauty absolutely every chance we get, as an act of prayer, as an act of worship, as an act of resistance. I believe in going out of our way if it means getting to see the water or the mountains or the sky streaked with colors. I believe in attending the sunset the way some people buy fancy theater tickets.

I love that phenomenon, that we go through life falling in love with new things because of the people we love, because of the paths they lead us down.

My friend Ian asked me recently what the title of my memoir would be. I thought about it for a minute and decided on There Will Be Snacks.

grief is somatic, that it locates itself in our bodies and, therefore, needs to be worked out of our arms and legs and chests with movement.

One of my goals is to be a person who is easily delighted, who can find great cause for celebration in a fig or a familiar face. If you need fireworks and perfection in order to crack a smile, you’re going to be disappointed over and over when life fails to be spectacular on command. I want to live with an extremely low bar for delight. It takes almost nothing at all—a good song, a ripe piece of fruit, a perfectly packed tote.

You are allowed to love tiny, daily, ordinary moments in your life. You’re allowed to feel wild joy for the simplest and smallest of reasons. You’re allowed to be unreasonably delighted by spicy pickles or a perfect apple or a joke your teen tells you. You’re allowed to be bewitched by your partner, even after all these years, to yearn to be close to him, to bury your face in his neck. You’re allowed to feel joy for almost no reason, except that you walked by the candle that your mother sent you and even when it’s not lit, just seeing it there on the hutch makes you happy. You’re allowed to hold memories in your mind and play them over and over like an old-fashioned slideshow—click, click, click.

I’m learning to choose myself instead of giving the best of myself to people and relationships and institutions. Loyalty to myself. Belonging to myself. Looking for joy just for myself. I need a disproportionate amount of care right now, and the one who is responsible for that care is me. I can’t assume that someone else will do it; it’s my responsibility to create a rhythm for my life that nurtures me, that brings me joy, that allows me to flourish, even given the weight of things I’m carrying.

I’m learning to put myself in the path of joy and beauty. I’m making my life small and simple. I’m building a shelter for myself—writing, walking, reading, cooking. Self-compassion, simplicity, joy, rest.

When we pray for people with whom we have difficult or painful relationships, God works lovingly and powerfully inside us, rebuilding and restoring us, shaping us into the kind of people who forgive and repair and give second chances—the kind of people we all want to be but can’t always get there on our own. This is what prayer can do. This is what God can do.

Cruelty and shame break us over time, and part of growth is choosing what we will and will no longer allow into our lives.

It’s healthy and right to protect ourselves from cruelty. I listen closely to people who have earned my trust, and I intentionally limit the number of voices who get to tell me who I am. The people who get to tell me who I am are the ones who have invested in me, who know me, who walk with me and see the everyday me.

I’m consciously creating more silence in my life. I’m reading more and more books and fewer and fewer tweets. I think we’re going to look back at this hot-take outrage machine and grieve what we lost along the way: Sober-mindedness. Willingness to let a story unfold over time. Wisdom. Perspective. Kindness toward our fellow humans.

I’m deleting and unfollowing and unsubscribing left and right these days for all sorts of reasons. I don’t have the capacity for snark or sarcasm that I used to. I don’t want to be yelled at or shamed or talked down to. I don’t have an unlimited capacity for outrage.

You decide who you allow into your life. Unfollow a whole slew of people. Make your world really quiet sometimes, especially when things are hard or when you have a difficult decision to make. Follow people you want to be like—because that’s what happens, for better and for worse. If you curate a list of compassionate, kind people, you’ll bend toward kindness; if you curate a list of snark, you’ll start to hear it in your own voice. If everyone you follow is buying something or selling something, you’ll find that this wanting itch will get extra itchy over time. There’s a proverb that reads, “Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23).

“But I’ve decided that what God is asking of me—and what he’s asking of all of us—is for each of us to show up to the body of Christ as our own selves, whatever that means—whatever gifts, whatever weaknesses, whatever dreams, whatever callings.”

Did you all just wake up and feel normal and at peace with your body? Did any of you feel at war, like a foreigner on foreign soil, like an enemy?

That there are spaces in my life that heal me and help me and don’t build or provide or create anything beyond that. Healing me is enough. Helping me is enough.

Being a Christian means devoting ourselves increasingly to the purposes of God on earth, to bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth in big and small ways.

Every one of us was created for love and goodness. And part of my own healing has been recovering that truth about myself. Over time, all the pain—both physical and emotional—started to chip away at me, started to make me believe there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t deserving of goodness or healing or wholeness anymore, that I had done something to bring about all this wreckage. But that’s not true. Pain and loss are a reality of life for all of us, and they’re not punishments or referendums on our fundamental worthiness.

we don’t control the story as it unfolds. If you want to be in control of a life story, write fiction.

The greatest moments of your professional life unfold right while you’re having a hard time sleeping or you go back to therapy or you think you might be in early menopause.

There’s no quick fix. There’s no overnight success. There’s no silver bullet. There’s just starting where your feet are, letting yourself be a beginner, showing up anyway, over and over and over.

I still believe in forgiveness, laughter, pizza for breakfast, dancing in the kitchen. I still say yes to second chances, staying out too late, watching the sunset like a movie, holding hands, farmers markets, taking the long way home. Is the world still beautiful? Still yes. Do our stories still matter? Still yes. Am I still hopeful? Still yes.