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

by Shauna Niequist

Let me tell you what happens. You realize that the institutions and structures and systems you’ve been trusting all your life aren’t actually going to save you or keep you safe—that they never were going to, that they never could. And you start to fall, and it’s terrifying. It’s awful and dark and you don’t know where the bottom is or who’s going to catch you and then one day you realize you are there, on the bottom. And under it all—under all the institutions and plans and systems, under all your fear and longing and tears, under absolutely everything—is love. Picture yourself on the ocean floor after all that falling, having left behind your successes and triumphs, your ego and shiny self, your deal-making and false assurances. At the bottom of it all, there is love. “What you do,” I told my friend as we sat in the grass, “is you stay there on the bottom of the ocean for a while. And little by little, you begin to build a little shelter for yourself, built on a foundation of love. You build with a prayer and then maybe a poem. You build a window and a door and a roof out of love and honesty and compassion. You ask the wisest people you know, and the kindest. “You reread the words of Jesus and the Psalms. You trust that love will hold it all together, and over time you realize that this tiny shelter you’ve built around yourself suits you much better than those grand institutions ever did, because this one was built out of pain and loss and disillusionment, forged by confe...