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

by Shauna Niequist

paying attention, to walking through the world as a noticer.

living in a world that feels dry as a desert some days, like the very spirit has been leached away,

And I’m longing for life, living water, nourishment, and direction. I want to live a faithful, meaningful life. I want to feel God’s presence, bring about his kingdom, tell his story in every way I know

There are seasons for tidy prose, and this is decidedly not one of them.

leaving behind the identities you believed you could never live without.

Oh my darlings, you’re not dumb—you’re new.

we’re learning, and it’s exhausting and humbling and fun and hard.

What is it that you don’t want to hear? What is it that you don’t want to feel inside your heart?

opening a heart that’s been fighting to keep itself safely closed for a long time.

2023

that sense of being known and taken care

So many of us are breaking away from the things that used to tether us, whether that’s a political party, a church, a marriage, a denomination, a family.

Christ has not failed me. There is no shield against suffering. But there is comfort. And there is presence. And there is healing.

But also sometimes there are glimpses of hope and healing, there are memories that flood my heart with joy, there is a flutter of hope for the future, not just my future, but all our futures. Things break and then they heal, stronger for the breaking. But it’s absolutely okay to cry along the way.

There are things in our lives that carve us so deeply, language fails.

You’re talking and laughing and unloading the dishwasher. You’re going to therapy, reading, writing. You’re doing all the things that healthy people do to get through trauma and crisis. You talk about it with your friends. You cry with them.

Sometimes I tell them that for the last couple years we lived in Chicago I was clinging to a life that had stopped working in at least a dozen ways, even though I was unwilling to admit it to myself.

expending insane amounts of energy, frantic and fearful, while all around me people are yelling, “I think it’s going to be fine, pumpkin. I think you can stop kicking.”

especially Christians, especially women, have near-endless lists of things we’re not allowed to think and feel, things we’re never supposed to admit. Hunger and anger are at the top of that list. Jealousy. Rage. Despair. We’ve been told so often that other people have it so much worse, that we really have nothing to complain about, that we have to push through the pain. All those refrains for so long, and it’s no wonder I can’t feel anything except neck pain. I’ve been training all my life to pretend I’m fine and have let my body suffer for it.

!!!!!!

it’s also about forgiveness—about how much anger and resentment you want to carry.

It was one of the core activities of my days, just keeping that anger and resentment alive and sparking, tending it like a fire. I’d think about it, talk about it, have imaginary conversations with the people involved, fantasize about spilling it all out onto the internet with glee. I knew I never would, but it was fun to imagine. But at a certain point, all that anger was like a pile of garbage in the middle of the floor of our apartment.

Turns out you need three sweaters, rent money, and five really good people. You need eggs and coffee. A Kindle account, a metro card, and one good umbrella.

It’s easy, of course, to buzz the beach and find the sparkle on good days—days when the sun is shining and your heart is light. When it gets really dark, though, that’s when you start to understand that it’s a discipline, and you need it in the dark so much more desperately than you need it in the light. Joy and celebration are practices for the long haul.

want to be a person of great joy, and I’m not waiting around for someone else to deliver it to me. I participate in my own healing, in my own inspiration, in my own practice of hope.

I buzz the beach because even on the worst days, even on the darkest days, the waves still come in and then recede, the wind still blows, the sun—that drama queen—still puts on a performance every night.

but I definitely started walking into it and closing the door behind me, just for a little space from the lovable stalker.

Me. Rn.

my mom called and said, “I have to tell you something. I’m watching you, and I’m watching this situation, and something needs to change. There’s a lot I can’t solve here, but I

the central narrative of Christianity is death and new life, over and over, death and new life.

Death makes way for life. The winter yields to the spring. The night brings the dawn. This is reality. I’m terrible at accepting it, but I’m trying.

Is this dawn or night for me?

Let yourself be tired and then anxious and then let yourself be surprised by a moment of beauty, of joy. This is how it is in the dark—confusing and circuitous and absolutely all the things sometimes, even in the same day.

It’s about the belief that it’s best for the priest to practice his vocation every single day, to keep him connected to what God has called him into, and to deepen that connection every single day.

The healing is in the trying.

keep doing the things we were made to do, the daily acts of goodness and creativity and honesty and service—as

Resilience is, simply put, getting back up.

It’s getting back up, not just after the first fall, but the ninth and tenth and seven hundredth. Resilience is feeling your exhaustion and choosing to move forward anyway. Resilience is watching your lovingly made plans fall to dust in your hands, grieving what’s lost and making (yet another) plan. It’s being willing to lay down your expectations for what you thought your life would be, what this year would be, what this holiday season would be, and being willing to imagine another way.

“You told me not to let go. So I didn’t.” And that’s basically a snapshot of how I’ve lived for the intervening fortyish years: not letting go—also, occasionally being dragged.

“let go or be dragged,” and I felt it in every fiber of my being. The phrase is a Zen proverb,

It’s okay to let yourself change, to let an environment change you, a city change you, a season change you. You are who you are, and also it’s okay to love one thing and then another.

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.

I’ve watched a hundred movies I never would have watched because Henry wanted me sitting next to him for those couple of hours, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

“Are you doing that thing you do where you sort of shut down and isolate and pretend you’re okay and you don’t reach out for help even though you clearly need it?”

grapes, brie, pistachios or peaches, fresh mozzarella, crusty bread, green olives. Nothing elaborate but always something.

it was like tiredness truly made him think and feel and experience these very dark and sad emotions that were not connected to reality.

Prayer is grabbing those worries in our fists and throwing them to someone who can hold them for us while we rest.

apologize often—and in detail.

What I love about the quick apology is that we can get right back on track instead of letting the distance between us grow and grow,

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.

My body was moving too quickly for my soul and spirit to catch up.

I started to feel my body and my soul moving at the same speed, in sync and motion and connection.

This is yoga to me.

It’s my job as a writer to live in such a way that every time I sit down to write, I’m inspired, not in the moment necessarily, but in my life, as a way of life. What this means is that it’s my job, literally, to go to art galleries and read poetry and go for walks and spend time with

I no longer wait for joy to rise up unbidden.