18: Before You Begin Again

Written By Denisa Nica

Do you ever feel like you’re always starting over?

You read the book, listen to the podcast, fill another journal page. You leave church encouraged. And then, a few days later, life happens, and you quietly wonder whether anything is really sticking.

If you’ve ever found yourself asking whether your faith is actually growing, or why it feels as though you’re learning the same lessons over and over again, you’re not alone.

In this episode, I reflect on why September makes so many of us feel the pressure to begin again—and whether the deeper invitation might be something else entirely.

In this episode, we explore:

  • why it can feel like you’re always starting over in your faith

  • what happens to the truths we return to over a lifetime

  • why spiritual growth is often quieter than we expect

If you’re stepping into a new season feeling uncertain, I hope this conversation helps you notice that God may be doing more than you realize.

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  • I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 18.

    This is a podcast about living faithfully in uncertain seasons when life feels unclear and nothing is quite settling yet.  If you’re not quite sure how to move through this in a way that feels steady and true, you’re in the right place to keep walking anyway. Each week I offer a reflection and a gentle way to help you live faithfully, one ordinary step at a time.

    I’m an author and spiritual director, and the founder of The Table— an online contemplative community shaped by a weekly rhythm, where women practice this kind of faithful living together, at their own pace, in the middle of their real lives and faith.

    I live in Spain, where life moves a little slower, and that has changed the way I pay attention, and the way I live inside my own life.

    This week, I want to think with you about what we go looking for every September, and whether we’re looking in the right place.

    Listen in.

    I don’t actually remember a time when I wasn’t reading.

    Some of my earliest memories are of standing in front of my dad’s bookshelves, running my fingers along the spines, looking for something—anything—I hadn’t already read.

    I grew up in communist Romania, long before Netflix or YouTube or tablets could rescue a bored afternoon. Entertainment looked very different back then. If you were bored, you either went outside to find someone to play with, or you picked up a book.

    My dad had this enormous library. The only problem was that most of it was made up of law books. He had studied law, so the shelves were lined with thick volumes about legislation and legal codes that weren’t exactly written for a little girl.

    My parents also had a small collection of novels, and I worked my way through those pretty early on. I remember reading The Red and the Black by Stendhal in middle school. Balzac wasn’t far behind.

    Eventually I got so desperate that I read my mum’s pregnancy books. After that, in high school, I started reading some of my dad’s law books. I can’t say I understood much of them, and I definitely didn’t finish them, but I remember reading far more legal theory than any sixteen-year-old reasonably should.

    Come to think of it maybe that’s why I ended up going to law school for a year before I left Romania and moved to Canada.

    Who knows.

    If my younger brother wanted to play something I wasn’t interested in, I’d disappear with a book. If I had an afternoon to myself, I’d read. I don’t think I knew it then. I just knew that if there was a book nearby, I was probably going to pick it up.

    Not much has changed. I’m forty-seven now, and Saturday mornings still often find me sitting up in bed with a cup of coffee and a book until almost noon. I read when I’m rested, I read when I’m tired, and I read when life feels confusing. I’ve also been known to pack theology books for a beach holiday, which my family has accepted is simply part of who I am.

    When Daniel and I moved from Canada back to Europe, thirty -six boxes of books came with us. And if you’re wondering whether I’ve stopped buying them since then…Not even close.

    Some of you already know this because you’ve been receiving my monthly letters for the last few years.

    One of the sections in those letters is simply, “Books I’m Reading.” People ask me all the time what I’m reading, and honestly, it’s fun to share. It feels a little like inviting you into the conversations I’ve already been having—the books that have been keeping me company, the ideas I’ve been wrestling with, the stories that have lingered a little longer than the others.

    Now, truth is, for someone who has spent most of her life reading, I don’t remember as much as I’d like to. Part of the reason I think I’ve developed such an elaborate system for saving quotes is because, years ago, I realized I couldn’t rely on my memory alone. If a sentence stops me in my tracks, I write it down. Otherwise, I’ll often remember exactly how it made me feel, but I won’t always remember the words themselves.

    The funny thing is, I don’t think books are the only place this happens. I’ve had the same experience after sermons, and I’ve filled journals with pages I was certain I’d come back to. I’ve underlined whole chapters in books because I was convinced I’d never forget what I’d just read. Sometimes I’ve walked out of church thinking, I really needed that today.

    And then someone asks me, a few days later, what the sermon was about.Usually I can remember the feeling.Sometimes I remember a sentence.Every now and then I remember a story.

    But not nearly as much as I’d like to.

    We have more access to good teaching than any generation before us. We carry entire libraries in our pockets.

    Who among us hasn’t finished reading something and thought, I don’t want to forget this?

    And yet life keeps moving: You start a conversation with a friend, you rush to doctor’s appointment, you stress about deadline at work. The washing machine is beeping from the next room, and a child is calling your name.

    I wonder if that’s why so many of us quietly worry that our faith isn’t growing—that if we can’t remember the thing, perhaps it isn’t really changing us. By the end of the week, what felt so vivid on Sunday has quietly slipped a little further into the background. But have you also asked yourself,  whether all the reading and listening is actually transformative? If anything is really sticking?

    I’ll probably recommend another book next month. I’ll almost certainly tell you about another podcast I’ve enjoyed.

    None of that is changing.

    But what if we’ve been asking the wrong question. Maybe the question was never, “How do we remember more?” Maybe it was, “How does truth actually become part of a person’s life?”

    The funny thing is, for me, when I look back, I don’t think the books themselves are what changed me.

    Still love them, still read them. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life buying books faster than I can get through them.

    But when I think about the things that have quietly shaped my faith, they’re rarely the things I encountered for the first time. More often they’ve been familiar words I’ve returned to over the years—a verse, a story, even a sentence I’d underlined long ago.

    There are books I’ve genuinely enjoyed. There are books I’ve recommended to friends. There are countless books that taught me something I didn’t know before. But every once in a while, you come across a writer who becomes more than someone you’ve read. Their words become companions, and you find yourself returning to them over the years without really planning to.

    One of those companions for me has been John Newton. Most people know him because he wrote Amazing Grace. I know him because of his letters.

    They were never meant to become books - people wrote to him from the middle of their ordinary lives. They were grieving someone they loved, wrestling with their faith, trying to discern what God was doing, wondering why they felt stuck, or simply needing someone wiser to help them see what they couldn’t yet see for themselves. In other words, they came to him from the very places where faith is hardest to live.

    And John Newton would sit down and write back. Two hundred years later, I still find myself pulling those letters off the shelf. They don’t feel old. If anything, they remind me how little the human heart has changed.

    Our lives look very different from theirs, but when you read those letters, you realize the questions haven’t really changed. We’re still trying to make sense of suffering. We’re still wondering whether God is at work when we can’t see much happening. We’re still learning how to trust him one ordinary day at a time.

    I think that’s one of the gifts of reading the people who’ve gone before us. They remind us that we aren’t the first to walk this road, and they quietly reassure us that we won’t be the last. The Christian life isn’t something each generation has to invent all over again. It’s something we receive, one faithful life bearing witness to another.

    That’s what his letters have become for me. I feel as though I’m sitting across from an older brother in the faith—someone who’s walked a little farther down the road and is generous enough to turn around and wait for the rest of us.

    There’s one image of his I’ve never forgotten. He said the Christian life isn’t like a mushroom that appears overnight. It’s like an oak. For long stretches, it hardly seems to change at all. And yet, season after season, it’s putting down roots.

    I don’t think I’ve ever finished one of his letters feeling as though I’d learned something I’d never heard before.

    Instead, I leave reminded. I’ve noticed that when life feels good and steady, I’m usually looking for new ideas. But when life becomes uncertain, I find myself returning to the truths that have carried Christians for centuries.

    Somehow, in those seasons, those familiar words become enough.

    That’s why every year or so, I keep returning to the very same letters - which  haven’t  changed… I have. Or perhaps the Spirit of God has simply given those words somewhere deeper to land.

    The more I noticed this pattern in my own life, the more I  stated noticing it throughout Scripture as well.

    I’m struck by how often God reminds his people. The same promises, the same stories and thee same invitation to remember.

    He never seems to grow tired of saying what is most important, and interestingly, he isn’t always saying something new.

    Most of the time in fact, he’s saying something we’ve heard before, only this time we’re finally in a place where we can hear it.

    Take Deuteronomy.

    Moses is standing with God’s people on the edge of a brand new season, and what he gives them isn’t new information. It’s a reminder of everything God has already been saying to them all along. In other words, before He led them into something new, he first reminded them of what they already knew.

    Truth isn’t meant to simply pass through our minds.

    It’s meant to remain long enough to shape our lives. Because sooner or later, every one of us finds ourselves in a season where we need something sturdy enough to carry us.

    Perhaps that’s what transformation has always looked like. And maybe that’s why, when life becomes uncertain, we don’t usually need something we’ve never heard before. We need the Holy Spirit to make what is true, become steady enough to carry us.

    God forms us by faithfully returning us to what is true, until, almost without noticing, it begins to shape the people we’re becoming.

    Most of those boxes are unpacked now. The books are back on the shelves. Most days I walk right past them. But every now and then I’ll pull one down, open it somewhere in the middle, and discover that the words haven’t changed. Somehow, I have.

    So here’s what I’d love for you to pay attention to this week.

    What’s one truth you find yourself returning to?

    I wonder what comes to mind for you. Perhaps it’s a verse. Perhaps it’s a prayer, or something you’ve read, or something someone has said, that stayed with you. Perhaps it’s simply one thing you’ve known about God for a long time but haven’t really sat with in a while. Don’t overthink it or try to answer too quickly. Just stay with that truth for a few days. Read it slowly. Carry it with you this week.… Don’t worry about finding something new. Just make room for it again.

    And the next time life feels uncertain or scary or confusing, notice whether that truth finds its way back to you.

    Perhaps this September isn’t asking you to reinvent yourself, or find a new way or another truth. Perhaps it’s simply inviting you to stay with one thing that is true, that’s still finding somewhere deeper to land.

    Blessed are you who hoped this would be the season everything finally changed.

    Blessed are you who have listened, prayed, read, returned, and wondered whether any of it has made a difference, and whether your faith would be enough for the road ahead.

    Blessed are you if the truest things in your life have become so familiar that you almost pass them by.

    May you be released from the pressure to keep searching for what is new.

    May you be given the grace to return, once again, to what is true.

    And may the Spirit of God quietly weave that truth ever more deeply into your life.

    Thanks for listening to episode 18 of Walking Anyway.

    I hope today’s conversation reminds you that faith isn’t built one new insight at a time. More often, it’s formed as the Spirit patiently returns us to the same truths, until they become sturdy enough to carry us through the ordinary—and the uncertain—parts of our lives.

    Because the way you’re walking through this, is already forming something steady in you.

    If you’ve found yourself nodding along as you’ve listened today, you can follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

    Would you be willing to leave a rating or review? It helps more people discover Walking Anyway and join us here each week.

    And if a relative or friend  came to mind while you were listening today, would you consider sharing this episode with them? Sometimes the kindest

    thing we can do is simply remind someone they aren’t the only one asking these questions.

    As always, you can find me at denisaonica.com., on Substack at denisaonica.substack.com or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica. I’d love to see you there.

    As you step back into your day, notice what stayed with you, and let that be enough for today. And just like light moving through a room— you don’t need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here.

    As we close, listen to these words from Psalm 1:

    “Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord,

    and who meditates on his law day and night.

    That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

    which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—

    whatever they do prospers.”

    Thanks for listening, I'll be here with you next time

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