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

by Shauna Niequist

We carry around our whole selves—our past and our parents, our loves and our limitations, our dreams and our grocery lists and our wounds.

What does it mean to be a noticer when what there is to notice is awful and you’d rather look away?

We lived a really distinct, really special, very particular way for many years. And now we live an entirely different way, and I also love it. There are a lot of very good, very lovely ways to live, not right or wrong, just entirely different.

I believe in seeking out beauty absolutely every chance we get, as an act of prayer, as an act of worship, as an act of resistance.

one way we distract ourselves from our own pain is by getting really concerned with everyone else’s pain.

I know what it’s like to have your heart broken. And also, I know what it’s like to forgive, little by little, over and over, a little more each day. I know what it’s like to breathe fresh clean air again after a long stretch of choking on the fumes of anger.

And I know now that I can trust myself, that I can belong to myself, that belonging to something larger than myself is lovely but isn’t for every season. It’s a little lonelier out here, a little rockier. I’m learning to make myself a home in the wilderness, in the unbelonging itself.

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.

It wasn’t like because he was tired he felt things a little more deeply than he usually might; it was like tiredness truly made him think and feel and experience these very dark and sad emotions that were not connected to reality.

The soul doesn’t thrive in absolute stillness because of what the body holds that needs to be worked out—that grief, that anger.

There are a million ways to be a responsible parent. There are a million ways to build a thriving marriage. There are a million ways to lead a meaningful life. But when you’ve lived only one way for a very long time, the messaging gets really loud, and anything different starts to seem suspect.

I want to live with an extremely low bar for delight.

Grief gives up the pretense of control. It’s lonely and quiet and submitted to the enormity of what has been lost, like being underwater. For most of us, anger is more familiar—and much safer.

Jesus did not preserve boundaries and traditions at the expense of humans. He valued humans at the expense of previously held boundaries and traditions.

I’m not at all sure we’re meant to be interacting with and handling the feelings of so many people.

The sheer volume of voices is too much for most of us, if we’re honest. It’s like standing in the center of a packed stadium every single day and expecting the constant noise and jostling not to take their toll on your spirit.

I’m deleting and unfollowing and unsubscribing left and right these days for all sorts of reasons. I don’t have the capacity for snark or sarcasm that I used to.

I don’t want to be yelled at or shamed or talked down to. I don’t have an unlimited capacity for outrage. I tend to follow people who seem to have a sense of groundedness, of commitment to the long game, of wisdom that accompanies their passion.

For a long time, I wanted people on social media to change—to be less cruel, to be decent, to be fair, to tell the truth. That would be lovely. But I’m not waiting around for that. I’m deciding who gets to enter my spaces, my heart, my mind, my living room,

And that’s the point. That there are spaces in my life that heal me and help me and don’t build or provide or create anything beyond that.

Because I still haven’t learned—not after all this pain, not after all this chaos, not after all this loss and heartache and confusion—that we don’t control the story as it unfolds. If you want to be in control of a life story, write fiction. Get a dollhouse. Puppets maybe.

While we all love a before and after, that’s not how life is. Most of life is before and after and back to middle and OMG! worse than before and tiptoe to middle and then amazing is-this-the-after? We think, I’m doing it! I’m a star! And then—another crash. We struggle and learn and forget. We change and change back and change again.

All that to say, what I wanted was an easy name. What I got was a partner who teaches me and challenges me and heals me and walks with me better now than he did twenty years ago,

that hit of familiarity, of taste memory, is so important, especially as we emerge from such a deeply disconnected, chaotic, isolated season.

home isn’t singular,

It reminds me of the improv rule “yes, and . . .” We want “yes, period,” right? We’re okay with moving forward, as long as we get to control what’s coming next. But that’s not how it works.