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

by Shauna Niequist

There are a million ways to be a Christian. There are a million ways to live your faith.

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.

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

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.

Not what did you make, but what did you heal from? Not how far did you go, but how hard did you fight to be free? And you will start to see that time is worth something different, and minutes and hours are ticked out differently—for joy, for play, for another chapter of a book, for setting up for a dinner party with a friend, or for another hour at the table. forty-three Keep Going One of the hazards of being a storyteller is that without even realizing it, you begin to see the narrative arc in every event and unfolding, in every conversation and shift of season.

that we don’t control the story as it unfolds.

So so refreshing to hear.

we’re actually more productive, not less productive—when we tend to ourselves with kindness and compassion than when we try to motivate ourselves through fear and shame.

when you do all that living, you have something to bring to the classroom.

want Henry to live a spacious, peaceful life, with moments of great focus and moments of great ease. And he’ll know how to do that if he sees us do that. Inhale, exhale, try softer.

realizing home isn’t singular, that you don’t lose one, but rather your world and your heart expand with each new home and new set of experiences, each new self and new street. The old ones stay, precious and tender, unlocked occasionally by a bite or a moment. And the new ones make your heart bigger and bigger, and your world bigger and bigger.

certainly, not my body or my face or my hair, but my willingness to show up in full color, in full bloom, one bright spot on a dark day.

the months and months of isolation made it hard to show up, hard to connect—inertia and fear and exhaustion told us to just stay home, just stay isolated. It felt like I had forgotten how to talk to people. I definitely forgot how to dress and still haven’t resumed anything like a makeup regimen.

I think we’ll all get to wherever we’re going, and I think we’ll all discover our wild, weird, brave next selves along the way.

I needed to remind myself that all those noes were in service of a bigger yes—yes to love and play and my kids and my marriage. Yes to adventure and grace and rest and delight. Yes to wild and silly and weird and delicious.

I still say yes to life. I still say yes to creative work, to the church gathered, to storytelling and hospitality and living with an open heart. I still say yes to risk, to adventure, to diving into the wreck, to making something beautiful from loss. I still believe in Jesus Christ, in the power of the table—both the Eucharist and also takeout around a cramped apartment table. I still believe in forgiveness, laughter, pizza for breakfast, dancing in the kitchen. I still say yes to second chances, staying out too late, watching the sunset like a movie, holding hands, farmers markets, taking the long way home.