17: How Faith Becomes Real

Written By Denisa Nica

What if Sunday was never meant to carry the whole weight of your spiritual life?

For years, one question quietly followed me across countries, church traditions, and conversations with ordinary people trying to make sense of their lives with God.

The answer changed the way I think about Christian formation—and it might change the way you think about your own faith.

In this episode, we explore:

  • why so many people feel disconnected from their faith—even while remaining deeply committed to it

  • one of the oldest practices of the Christian life that many of us have quietly forgotten

  • why spiritual growth has always happened through more than information

  • what church history might teach us about living faithfully today

If today's conversation leaves you wishing there were a place to keep exploring these questions, I'd love to invite you to experience a complimentary Guest Seat at The Table.

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Find Denisa Elsewhere:

  • I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 17.

    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.

    Today we’re exploring a question that’s been quietly following me for years: what if Sunday was never meant to carry the whole weight of our spiritual lives? Listen in.

    For most of my adult life, church looked a certain way. I was born and raised in Romania in the Greek Orthodox Church, but I moved to Canada when I was twenty. That’s where I spent my entire adult life. Later, I became part of the evangelical church, volunteered for a long time and eventually served on staff for a season -  and for many years, that was the world I knew. It shaped my faith in beautiful ways, and it gave me people I still love.

    Then, on July 2, 2022, our family packed up our lives and moved to Spain.

    I don’t think I realized at the time that I wasn’t just moving to another country. I was quietly stepping outside the only expression of church I’d really known as an adult.

    Since then, I’ve found myself worshipping in places I probably never imagined I would. Some Sundays I’ve been in evangelical churches. Other Sundays I’ve quietly slipped into the back of a Catholic cathedral. I’ve stood through Orthodox liturgies while visiting Romania. I’ve sat in Anglican services on Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday.

    Over time, I started noticing something. And I don’t mean about denominations, or about who was doing church “right.” I  mean the people.

    I found myself listening to Christians whose stories didn’t fit the categories I’d been carrying around for years: women who had left church but hadn’t left Jesus, people who loved the Church deeply and were quietly grieving it or who faithfully showed up every Sunday but wondered why their faith still felt disconnected from the lives they were actually living.

    They weren’t looking for another debate about theology or politics. They were trying to figure out how to follow Jesus in the middle of ordinary life.

    The details were different, their faith traditions were often different, so were the languages. But after enough conversations, I started to realize they were all circling the same question. Not, Which church should I go to? Not even, Should I go to church at all? But something a lot quieter than that: Where does faith actually belong in an ordinary human life?

    Now, as someone whose vocational calling is in the realm of spiritual formation, I’ve been thinking of this for a long time now, and the more I sit with it, the more I wonder if Christians have been asking some version of that question for centuries.

    It’s funny. When we moved to Spain, I thought the biggest adjustments would be learning another language, getting used to the siesta and dinner at ten o’clock, figuring out Spanish bureaucracy, and learning how adult life works in a European and Mediterranean culture. I never imagined it would change the questions I carried about the Church.

    Actually… let me back up for a second.

    What surprised me wasn’t simply discovering different Christian traditions. I expected that. What I didn’t expect, was realizing how much diversity existed even within traditions I thought I already knew.

    Here in Spain, I’ve worshipped with British and Irish evangelicals, American church planters, Belgian, Dutch and Spanish Christians, and people from all over Europe who somehow found themselves in the same little churches. We all opened the same Scriptures. We all confessed the same Christ. But every community carried its own history, its own rhythms, and its own instincts. Within evangelical churches, worship felt different, prayer sounded different and people carried different assumptions about what church life looked like.

    All that to say - living here widened my view. It also made me a little humbler I think. I became less certain that the expression of church I knew best, was the only way Christians had faithfully lived together.

    If anything, these years made me more grateful for my own story. I found myself appreciating gifts I hadn’t fully realized I’d been carrying with me. The reverence and mystery of the Orthodox Church that shaped my childhood, or the deep love of Scripture I received in the evangelical churches where I spent so much of my adult life. None of those gifts disappeared, they just found a larger home.

    So going back to my question earlier: “What does it actually look like to live a Christian life?” moving to Spain unexpectedly collided with something I’d been carrying since my years at Regent College. Even there, I seemed to come away from church history lectures asking slightly different questions.

    I cared about theology, and I still do. I loved learning about the movements that shaped the Church, but I kept getting distracted by people. Maybe this is just how my brain works.

    I wanted to know what ordinary Christians did on a Wednesday morning. How did they pray when nobody was preaching? Who noticed when they were struggling? Who listened when they had doubts? How did they learn forgiveness? How did they become the kind of people who looked a little more like Jesus in the middle of ordinary life?

    I still remember my first Ash Wednesday service in an Anglican church here in Spain. I remember the silence, the candles, walking forward, not entirely sure what to expect. And then the warmth of the wet ashes against my forehead. I don’t know why that memory has stayed with me. It just has. Moments like that kept widening the questions I was asking.

    The first Christians gathered in homes where meals and prayer and everyday life belonged together.

    A few centuries later, the desert mothers and fathers stepped away from the noise of an increasingly public Christianity because they were searching for lives that remained attentive to Christ. Out there in the quiet, spiritual friendship began to take shape. People sought out wise companions who could help them notice the presence of God in the ordinary days of their lives.

    Benedict and the monastic communities that followed built lives around shared rhythms. A bell would interrupt work, for prayer. Meals were shared. Hospitality was practiced and confession became ordinary. Formation happened slowly, almost unnoticed, over years.

    The Celtic Christians spoke about the anam cara—the soul friend.

    Centuries later, John Wesley preached to thousands, yet still gathered people into small class meetings where they asked one another simple, honest questions about the state of their souls.

    And if you keep following those footprints through history, they never really disappear. You’ll find them in Moravian communities. You’ll find them in spiritual direction, and you’ll find them in little churches that history never bothered to write books about.

    I suppose that’s what kept holding my attention, that Christians, in every century, seemed to keep making room for ordinary people to learn how to follow Jesus together. And somewhere along the way, especially after moving to Spain, instead of thinking I was looking at different expressions of Christianity, I started seeing one long conversation.

    One that had been unfolding for centuries, and one that, somehow, I had just stepped into - without even looking for it. If you’d asked me a few years ago what fascinated me about church history, I probably would have talked about doctrine or the Reformation or the early Church. I still love all of that.

    But asking: “Why did Christians keep creating these little places?” has become something even more fascinating to me in recent years.

    Century after century, in traditions that knew almost nothing about one another, the Church kept making room for people to follow Jesus in smaller circles. Sometimes it was a monastery. Sometimes it was a band meeting. Sometimes it was a spiritual friendship. The names changed, the practices changed, and sometimes even the theology sounded quite different, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all responding to the same deeply human reality.

    I’ve led church small groups for years - actually long enough to have forgotten most of the studies we worked through. If you asked me what we covered one fall or another, I honestly wouldn’t know. That’s a bit humbling because I remember how much time I spent preparing those evenings. Leaders are funny that way. We tend to think people will remember the questions we asked or the point we hoped everyone would take home.

    They rarely do.

    What stands out to me though, are the conversations that began when someone reached for their car keys. We’d be stacking chairs together or standing in the kitchen with coats over our arms, and almost without realizing, the conversation became more honest than anything that had happened while we were officially meeting. It turns out people don’t always find the words they’re looking for, until they know they don’t have to leave just yet.

    When I eventually began training as a spiritual director, I remember having that same feeling again. People sometimes imagine spiritual direction is about finding someone who has the answers. I understand why they think that, but it bears very little resemblance to the conversations I’ve actually had.

    Most of them begin with ordinary things: work, marriage, a difficult decision or a relationship that’s become complicated. You begin where life already is, and if nobody rushes the conversation, it almost always finds its way somewhere deeper. Someone comes wanting to talk about work and discovers he’s really grieving. Someone else thinks she’s trying to make a decision and realizes the deeper question isn’t the decision at all. Every conversation finds its own way there. Sometimes it’s through words. Sometimes neither of us says anything for a while, and somehow the silence carries the conversation further than either of us could have.

    And every now and then I’d catch myself thinking, I’ve seen this before.

    It was the same question that had been quietly following me through church history.

    Then I started reading the Gospels a little differently.

    Jesus teaches, yes, but I started paying attention to everything that happened in between. The walks from one village to another. The meals that never seem rushed. The conversations that wander long enough for people to ask the question underneath the question.

    The disciples misunderstand him with remarkable consistency, and Jesus simply keeps walking with them.

    I’m always amazed by how patient he is. He stays with people, lets the conversation unfold, and their questions ripen. He never seems anxious or  particularly concerned with getting people to the finish line as quickly as possible. He simply stayed with them, trusting that transformation could take its time.

    Why were they all so convinced that ordinary life belonged right in the middle of Christian formation?

    Whether it was Benedict, Wesley, the desert mothers and fathers, or Jesus himself, I kept finding the same instinct. Faith wasn’t reserved for worship services or moments of private devotion. It was expected to find its way into kitchens and fields, around tables and along dusty roads, into questions that couldn’t be answered in a single conversation and lives that were still unfinished.

    Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to treat faith as something we step into for an hour on Sunday, or during a quiet time in the morning. Then we return to what we call real life, as though discipleship pauses until we can make our way back again.

    The Christians who have gone before us seemed to imagine something entirely different. They expected Christ to meet people in the middle of ordinary life. Not after the difficult conversation, but within it, not after every question had been answered, but while people were still learning how to ask them. And certainly not once the grief had settled, but while it was still raw.

    Looking back across the centuries, we see  how Christians kept creating these smaller communities because they understood that following Jesus is something we learn together.

    And despite their different names and rhythms, they all seemed to hold on to the same conviction: that following Christ takes time.

    Not just learning about him, but learning to recognize his presence in the middle of an ordinary life. And I don’t think that’s something many of us know how to do anymore.

    Most of us are simply trying to make sense of our lives with God. Some of us are deeply rooted in the Church. Some of us are quietly carrying wounds from it. Some of us are returning after years away. Some of us aren’t even sure what we believe anymore, only that we can’t shake the feeling that there is something more. Wherever we find ourselves, I think many of us are carrying the same quiet longing.

    We want somewhere we can bring our real lives without feeling like we have to tidy them up first. Somewhere our questions aren’t embarrassing and silence isn’t something to rush through. We want somewhere nobody is trying to fix us or hand us easy answers before we’ve even had time to listen.

    A place we can become honest about our lives before God.

    These communities throughout the history of the Church weren’t simply creating places for people to gather. They were protecting a way of paying attention. A way of listening together, of helping one another notice where Christ was already present and at work, even when no one could see it yet.

    I think that’s something we’ve quietly lost. We’ve become very good at finding information, opinions and answers. But it’s much harder to find a place where you can slowly learn and cultivate the practice of spiritual discernment for example. A place where Scripture is opened without hurry. Where silence has a place and difficult questions don’t have to be resolved by the end of the evening. Where there is room to wonder before there is pressure to conclude. Where someone gently helps you notice where Christ has been meeting you in the middle of your own ordinary life.

    Because perhaps this is what Christian formation has always been. Instead of becoming people who have all the answers, becoming people who know how to pay attention. People who can recognize the quiet invitations of God in the middle of an ordinary Thursday.

    And maybe that’s also why these conversations have quietly taken the shape they have—here on Walking Anyway, and in my spiritual direction work. They’ve all grown out of the same conviction, that following Jesus isn’t something we’re meant to figure out alone. It’s something we learn, slowly, in the company of others.

    If you’ve been listening today and finding yourself thinking, I wish there were a place like that, I want you to know there is.

    For the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of sitting around that kind of table every week with women from different countries. We gather online every other week, which might not sound like the most obvious place for deep spiritual companionship. But week after week, inside our weekly rhythm I’ve watched women who arrived as strangers begin remembering one another’s stories. Somewhere along the way, they become the people who pray for one another, quietly carry one another through difficult seasons, and gently help each other notice where Christ is already at work in ordinary life.

    That little community is called The Table.

    Many of the women who come arrive a little tired. They’ve been carrying more than people realize. They love God, but they sometimes wonder whether they’re the only ones asking the questions they’re carrying. They’re longing for a slower, more honest way of following Christ, and they’re relieved to discover they don’t have to carry that longing alone.

    If you’ve been carrying your life with God on your own, I’d love to invite you to experience it for yourself.

    A Guest Seat is simply an opportunity to spend three weeks with us before deciding whether The Table is a place you’d like to call home. You’ll receive our weekly reflections, join our live gathering, and experience the gentle rhythm of the community for yourself.

    You don’t need to know anyone before you come, or to have your questions sorted out. And you don’t need to worry about saying the right thing. Many women spend their first gathering simply listening, and that’s perfectly okay.

    Just come. Pull up a chair, spend 21 days with us.

    Then see what God might have for you there. You’ll find all the details about reserving a Guest Seat in the show notes. I’d love to welcome you.

    As you step into this week, may you remember that God has never asked you to follow Him alone.

    May He gently lead you toward people who make it easier to notice His presence, who carry your story with care, and who remind you of His faithfulness when your own vision grows dim.

    And wherever you find yourself today—whether in a crowded church, a quiet home, or somewhere in between—may you know that you are seen, deeply loved, and already being welcomed into the life of Christ, one faithful step at a time.

    Thanks for listening to episode 17 of Walking Anyway.

    I hope today’s conversation has reminded you that you’re not the first person to wonder how faith finds its way into ordinary life—and that you don’t have to carry that question alone.

    And if it left you wishing there were a place to keep exploring these questions, you’ll find a complimentary Guest Seat at The Table waiting for you in the show notes. I’d love to welcome you.

    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.

    Before we go, I wanted to leave you with a few words that have stayed with me. These came from different women around The Table over the past few months.

    “I didn’t realize how much I needed a place where I didn’t have to carry everything by myself.”

    “There’s something about knowing I don’t have to show up perfectly that makes me want to stay.”

    “I found myself remembering something from the gathering while I was doing dishes.”

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

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16: Keep Company: Spiritual Direction