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

by Shauna Niequist

If strangers kept coming to my door, asking to be let into my actual house to tell me everything they ever thought about me and my life and my family, I would move. Why have I allowed strangers into my mental living room and my mind and my heart?

There’s a proverb that reads, “Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). Anyone who went to Christian youth group knows this proverb mostly in a dating context, but when I think about what it means to guard my heart these days, I think about what I’m allowing in and what I’m not allowing in. I want more kindness, more love, more compassion. I can’t allow in cruelty or meanness or snark. Because our hearts are the wellspring, the center from which everything else flows, and it’s up to each of us to tend to our heart and protect it.

“The church is a mess—in its own right, politically, in terms of gender and race—and it’s getting so much wrong. How do you stay?” “I see all that,” I told her. Of course I do. But there’s a stubborn part of me that is absolutely unwilling to starve my own heart because some other people have gotten it wrong. My faith is one of the most nourishing, healing, restorative parts of my life, and I’m unwilling to go without it as a protest. I see the church’s failings. I’ve seen many of them up close, much closer than I’d like. But show me something that hasn’t been corrupted by human hands. And my hands are as fallible as any. I still believe that the way of Jesus, even poorly done, is a better way than any other.

We have regular conversations these days with our kids about the process of faith, not just the fact of it. We tell them it’s something that changes over time, something we have to tend to. We talk with them in age-appropriate ways about how doubt is a part of faith, about how questions are normal, about how our faith stretches and expands inside our hearts over time, about how it’s not the same in every season.

There are a million reasons not to stay. I could list several hundred thousand, at least. Many of our churches are sick, infected by racism and patriarchy. Many use shame and fear as ways to control. Many use manipulation and charm. There are so many reasons to walk away. But nothing gets healed or restored or brought back to life unless those of us who still believe in hope, in honesty, in confession and prayer and the sacred reality of the church gathered keep gathering, keep working, keep praying, keep making changes. And so I stay. I hold on to the fact that God is. And he is love, which is the center of everything.

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. Self-compassion isn’t unwillingness to take our own failings seriously. It’s following God’s example, tending to ourselves with the same kindness he shows us, even when we’ve failed, especially when we’ve failed. Another way to look at it: self-compassion and self-care are acts of obedience, stewarding well what God has given to us, loving what he loves.

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. Life breaks us, and then we put ourselves back together, a little stronger each time, a little braver each time, a little freer each time. And goodness and peace and second chances and joy are not only for the unbroken. They’re for all of us. They’re for me. And they’re for you.

Just keep going. A little every day. A little honesty, a little bravery, a little compassion—for yourself, for everyone else. Keep going, keep going, keep going.

I’m playing the long game. We live in a world that loves flashy and fast and fake. But none of that lasts; what lasts is the long game. The legacy. The love that you build day by day. It’s about choosing to be present, today and then tomorrow and then the next day. It’s about getting up after a fall, over and over.

Life will break your heart in a thousand ways, but there’s still music and there’s still dancing. There’s still coffee and toast. There’s still kissing and there are still late dinners on busy sidewalks. Twinkly lights, novels, old movies, soft blankets, black-and-white photos, French braids, salty hot french fries dipped in mayo and ketchup.

When you’re old, you realize that most of the things you’re worried about are actually going to happen, whether you worry about them or not. Hearts will break and bodies too. People will betray you. Systems will fail. Things you believed were impenetrable will crumble, and looking back all the signs were there, but there’s something about us that prefers blindness, especially where love is involved. Terrible things happen. Treasured things break. If you’re like me, you get tumbled, and the worst of you is on full display. And then you turn back to yourself. You ask for help. You ask for forgiveness. You ask for a second chance. You get up and keep living. More than anything, you forgive yourself.

I know now that I’m strong enough, brave enough, whole enough to hold it all—how it was and how it ended. What I got wrong, what I made right, who I was, who I wasn’t, who I’ve yet to become. What I miss, what was lost, what’s still unfolding. I’m not perfect or shiny or bulletproof. The story of my life is not a fairy tale. It’s not a horror story. It’s just a story like most stories—dark and light and beautiful and terrible and still being written.

I’m old enough to realize we don’t get everything. We don’t get an unlimited number of do-overs or fresh starts. There are some options that do, at some point, close for good. I’m probably never going to be a ballerina or a chef or a cast member on SNL—I think those ships have sailed. But there are still a lot of ships in the harbor, to extend the metaphor. There are a thousand places on this earth my eyes have never seen. There are people who will change my life, somewhere down the road, whom I haven’t even met yet. There’s work I’ll do that I can’t even imagine right now. There’s more to learn, more to taste, more to discover. There’s more to experience, more to leave behind, more to grasp with both hands. And I’m going to. I’m going to keep walking, keep loving, keep writing, keep praying. I’m going to keep learning, keep forgiving, keep apologizing, keep moving forward. I’m going to keep inviting, keep listening, keep opening my arms to all of life—terrible and beautiful. There are meals to savor and faces to fall in love with. There are sunsets to watch like movies and songs to dance to in the kitchen—maybe this kitchen, maybe six kitchens from now—who knows? I don’t. That’s for sure. I know less and less and less. But I feel more. I believe more. I trust more deeply in the goodness of our God than I ever have. I’m more aware of the darkness, and more grateful for the light. I’m walking away, in search of another dream, another adventure, another chance to open my hea...

About half the things I said I’d never do are now things I’ve done, so I’m done making predictions.

What I see down the road—possibility, hope, beauty. I don’t know any more than that. Loss, I’m sure. Struggle. But I’m not afraid of those things the way I was before. I have a lot more close-up experience with them, and we get through. That’s what I know—we get through.