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

by Shauna Niequist

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. Try praying every single day for a handful of people you love. Start with the four words, and then make it your own—your own words, your own rhythm, your own embodied and personal way of entrusting your family and friends to God through prayer, the way Jesus entrusted his disciples to his Father through prayer. And now here’s a challenge: include someone with whom you have a complicated or broken relationship. I’m not an expert in prayer or friendship or anything, but I do know that just a couple weeks of this way of praying has loosened something inside me that has been clenched like a fist for a long time. Prayer changes us—it’s God’s sacred tool, able to transform and rebuild us from the inside out, day by day, breath by breath, prayer by prayer.