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

by Shauna Niequist

I am allowed to heal. I am allowed to be happy. I am allowed to do work I love, to celebrate, to feel joy and delight, to laugh. I’m allowed to invest in my own healing, allowed to protect myself, allowed to tend lovingly to myself in all sorts of ways. I recently watched workers put up scaffolding on the side of the chapel at the seminary. My little desk in our apartment looks out at the courtyard and the chapel, so I’ve spent at least a thousand hours admiring the stained glass windows, the red brick. I felt disappointed when I first saw the scaffolding—it’s ugly, and the work is loud. And then all at once, I realized that the scaffolding and the repair work are ways of caring for this building I love. You put up with ugly and loud for a while because you’re committed to preserving something of great value. Without the scaffolding and the work, this precious building would crumble and decay. I feel this truth reverberating through my life, because bricks and glass crumble and crack without that scaffolding from time to time, and human hearts crumble and crack too without deep work and intentional care. We only heal by investing in the difficult and ugly work, even if it isn’t pretty, even if it looks like a mess for a while. Sometimes people equate self-compassion and self-care with being selfish or overly self-focused and believe it’s somehow in opposition to faith. But God’s fundamental orientation toward us is love. He made us with love, watches over us with love.