15: Keep Faith

Written By Denisa Nica

Why does it feel like we’re always living one step ahead of ourselves?

If you’ve been feeling behind, always thinking about what’s next, or wondering where the days are going, you’re not alone.

This week we reflect on a quiet habit many of us share without even realizing it—and how it quietly shapes the way we move through our lives and our faith.

In this episode we explore:

  • why it’s so hard to stay with the day we’re living

  • what happens when we’re always looking ahead

  • a simple practice that’s helping me keep faith in ordinary life

If you’re feeling stuck in an uncertain season, I hope this conversation helps you find your way back to today.

Links + Resources From This Episode:

Find Denisa Elsewhere:

  • I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 15.

    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 simple way to faithfully walk one more step.

    I’m an author and spiritual director, and the founder of The Table— an online contemplative space 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, we’re talking about a quiet habit many of us share without even realizing, and one simple practice that has helped me keep walking anyway. Listen in.

    A few weeks ago, during one of our gatherings at The Table, we were talking about summer. One of the women said, almost in passing, “I call it rounding up.”

    She said that, as soon as the calendar turns to July, she starts thinking about August.Then August feels like the end of summer already, all while, in reality it’s only July 2nd.

    She said she even notices herself doing it with the daylight.

    All spring she’s delighted because the days are getting longer. Then June arrives, and she catches herself thinking,

    “They’re already getting shorter.”

    She laughed and said, “I call it rounding up.” I haven’t stopped thinking about those words.

    And by the way, if you’re new here and don’t know what The Table is, it’s the online community I host for women who want to learn how to walk with God in the middle of right now life.

    And the more I listened to everyone around the room that day, the more I realized she wasn’t really talking about calendars.

    Maybe you know what she means.

    You’re making breakfast, but part of you is already thinking about dinner. You’re halfway through the week, and somehow your mind has already reached the weekend. You’re sitting with someone you love, but another part of you is already trying to solve tomorrow.

    It happens so quietly that we hardly notice it. Without ever meaning to, we’ve already left the day we’re living. I’ve been wondering why that feels so familiar. Because I don’t think we’re trying to rush our lives. I think we’re trying to live them well.

    Last week on the podcast, we talked about the woman we imagined we’d become by the end of summer, and I think this is the other side of that same conversation. Maybe we’re hoping that once we get through this season, life will finally settle down. That we’ll catch up. That we’ll become the person we’ve been trying to become. And there’s nothing wrong with hoping. Hope is a beautiful thing.

    But somewhere along the way we find ourselves saying, “I can’t believe it’s August already,” or “Where did this summer go?” or “This year has just flown by.”

    Time really is moving quickly. I just don’t think that’s the whole story. Maybe that’s why we get to the end of a day and wonder where it went. Trying to live in two days at once is exhausting.

    And that’s when I started wondering what this has to do with the way we walk with God. Then the story in Exodus came back to me.

    God’s people had just left Egypt. They were in the wilderness, and every morning they woke up to find enough manna for that day. Every morning they stepped out into a new day, and every morning they discovered there was enough. Again.

    Now if you’re asking me, and I have a feeling this is probably true for most of us  -  I would have wanted enough for tomorrow. Just enough certainty to stop wondering. Just enough to stop feeling anxious or to feel like I was finally ahead. Except, that’s not how the story goes.

    And I can’t help wondering if we’ve spent a surprising amount of our lives asking God for tomorrow’s bread.

    I know I have. I’ve wanted tomorrow’s certainty while I was still living today. I’ve often wanted to know everything would be okay before I could be okay today. But for God’s people, every morning in the wilderness, there was enough. Tomorrow’s bread was never lying on the ground. There was only today’s.

    We begin to live as though faithfulness belongs just a little further down the road. We tell ourselves it will be easier once the decision has been made, once life settles down a little, once we feel less uncertain than we do today.

    We’re always almost there. Almost ready. Almost the person we hoped we’d become. So I wonder if we’ve been looking for God in the same place we’ve been looking for faithfulness. Somewhere ahead of us - even if He met His people there, right where they were.

    What I’m wondering is what tomorrow morning would feel like if we really believed that? If we stopped expecting the faithful life to begin somewhere else. If we stopped asking tomorrow to carry what only today can hold.

    Maybe we’d wake up to the ordinary life we’ve been given and discover that it’s so much more than the place we’re trying to get through. Maybe we discover that instead, it’s the place where God has chosen to meet us.

    I titled this episode Keep Faith because I wanted to leave something in our hands. Not another idea to think about. Just something small enough to carry into your day.

    For the last few weeks, I’ve been a little obsessed with a beautiful song by Porter’s Gate called Centering Prayer.

    Centering prayer is an ancient Christian practice of gently returning our attention to God. I’ll link to the song in the show notes if you’d like to listen to it as well.

    The song opens with these words: “I want to be where my feet are.” That line has been on my lips and my mind, and has lived in my body lately. I’m humming it, singing it, whispering it, and saying it back to myself in my head - until it started to feel like a prayer for keeping faith a little bit.

    What if to keep faith looks like being where our feet already are?

    Making breakfast without already living in dinner, finishing today’s walk before tomorrow has arrived, putting our phones down long enough to notice the people and the life that’s already here.Just staying with the day we’re living a little longer than we’re used to?

    Maybe these words are for you this week too. Or maybe you’ll find your own. But if it helps, perhaps you can borrow this little prayer: “I want to be where my feet are.”

    And when we forget—and we will—may we gently come back to the day we’re living.

    Blessed are we who find ourselves living a little further down the road than the day we’re actually in.

    We were only trying to be faithful.

    May we be gently returned to where our feet are.

    May we find enough for the step we’re standing on.

    And may we keep faith.

    Amen.

    Thanks for listening to episode 15 of Walking Anyway.

    I  hope reflecting on this helps you come home to the life you’re actually living—with a little more trust, a little more steadiness, and a little more freedom to simply be where your feet are—so you can faithfully keep walking anyway, one day at a time

    If these conversations resonate with you, they don’t have to end here. They continue every week around The Table.

    The Table is the online community I host for women from different countries and different seasons of life who are learning, together, to walk with God in the life we’re actually living.

    Right now, we’re keeping our August Sabbath—a month of making room to receive before we begin again.

    We’ll gather again in September, and when we do, there will always be a place for you. You’ll find all the details in the show notes.

    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.

    And if you’d be willing to leave a rating or review, it helps more people discover Walking Anyway and join us here each week.

    If you know someone who’s been carrying tomorrow while they’re still living today, maybe send this episode their way. We all need someone who reminds us to come home sometimes.

    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, there’s a conversation from Corrie ten Boom’s memoir, The Hiding Place, that has stayed with me for years.

    As a little girl, Corrie was afraid that one day she wouldn’t have the strength she needed for something difficult. Her father reminded her that when they traveled by train, he never gave her the ticket days in advance. He gave it to her just before they boarded.

    He said,

    “Our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things too. When the time comes, you will find the strength you need—just in time.”

    May we carry that image with us this week.

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

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14: The Unfinished Summer