02: Nothing is Changing

Written By Denisa Nica
 

What do you do when something in your life isn’t changing—no matter how much you’ve prayed, tried, or waited?

If you’ve been feeling stuck, second-guessing yourself, or quietly carrying something that hasn’t shifted, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I talk about what it’s like when something in your life isn’t changing—and how to keep living your life when nothing seems to move forward, even as you’re learning to trust God in it.

In this episode, we explore:

  • what it feels like when a season won’t shift

  • the questions that surface when nothing changes

  • how to stay present with your life in the middle of it

  • how to trust God when life feels stuck and unresolved

If you’re in a season like this right now, this episode might help you name what’s hard and keep showing up to your life, even here.

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  • Hi. I'm Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You're listening to episode 2.

    This is a podcast about living faithfully in uncertain seasons when life feels unclear and nothing is quite settling yet if you carry questions and 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. I'm an author and spiritual director and the founder of the table, a 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.

    Now for today's episode, listen in.

    I've been thinking about something this past week, and I have a feeling you might recognize it too.

    There was a stretch of time not long after we moved here from Vancouver, where something in my life just wasn't changing, and I kept trying to move it, trying to understand it, trying to find a way forward. I was praying about it too, but even that didn't seem to shift anything. It was just there something I couldn't fix and something I didn't really know how to move forward, and I kept waking up to it. It's been four years now, and that part of my life is still the same. Some mornings, I would stand in the kitchen with my coffee, and the light would come in the same way through the window, and I'd be holding the same cup in the same quiet, and I could feel it again.

    Nothing had really moved. The same question was still there, right where I left it. I would carry it into the day, and somehow I would bring it back at night. And after a while, something shifted, not in the situation, but in me. It got quieter, not peaceful, just quieter.

    There were fewer words for it and less urgency to explain it. It was just something that stayed, and underneath that, there was a thought that didn't stay, that I didn't there was a thought that I didn't stay with for long.

    What if this doesn't change? I didn't follow that all the way through, but I felt it. I still do sometimes, and I don't know what that looks like in your life right now, but I have a feeling there's something, maybe small, maybe quiet, that hasn't moved either.

    Maybe you felt that too. In her new book, Joyful Anyway, author Kate Bowler writes these words: “all of us live inside of struggles that no one can entirely understand.” And when I hear that, I think that's true, not because it's new, but because it names something we already know. Because when you're in a moment like this, you're not really looking for something new, you're looking for something familiar, something that still holds something it can come back to. And I find myself wondering sometimes, God, what is this? Is this something that will eventually shift, or is it something I'm learning to live alongside?

    I don't stay with that question for long, but it's there, and life keeps moving. You're still waking up and going through your day, standing at the sink, rinsing the same plate in your hands, folding the laundry, pairing socks that somehow always go missing, walking through the grocery store and reaching for the same things you always buy. And somehow all of that keeps happening while this one thing in your life hasn't moved. It's like a room you stop walking, you keep walking into where everything is still in the same place you left it, and it's still there, and so are you.

    Because sometimes faithfulness doesn’t look like changing anything. Sometimes it’s as simple as pausing long enough to pay attention. It’s telling the truth about what’s hard, and continuing to live your one human life right alongside it.

    So maybe your next right thing is this.

    Take a few minutes. Sit down somewhere quiet, if you can. Grab a pen and a piece of paper, and write down the part of your life that hasn’t changed. And if more comes to mind, you can write that down too. There’s no need to rush. Take the time you need. And when the words are there on the page, just sit with them for a moment.

    You don’t have to solve anything and don’t have to make a plan.

    Just let the words be there. This is the part that hasn’t changed. This is what I’ve been carrying. And maybe, for today, that’s enough.

    To name it. To bring it before God. To let yourself be there too. Right here, in the middle of it.

    We keep walking anyway.

    Thanks for listening to episode two of Walking Anyway.

    I hope this simple practice of naming what isn’t changing helps you stay with it and trust that God meets you right there inside it. Because the way you're walking through this in the middle of what hasn't settled yet is already forming something steady in you.

    If you're wanting a place to actually practice this now just think about it. You can begin with a 21 day guest seat inside the table. It's a quiet space where you learn to stay with God in your real life, and where you don't have to do that on your own.

    You can find me at denisaonica.com, or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica, as you step back into your day, notice what stayed with you, and let that be enough for today. Anne Lammott writes, in Traveling Mercies: “ I do not understand the mystery of grace, only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” 

    And just like light moving through a room, you don't need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here.

    I'll close with a blessing from Kate Bowler.

    “God, I'm in the wrong place, and I know it, but I can't get out. Blessed are the poor in spirit ready to say I have no idea I got, how I got here, or how to escape the stagnant place, but I do know I'm ready for more light, more truth, more grace. God, let there be moments today that move me to where love and beauty can reach me, remind me of the deeper truth that animates each step.” Amen.

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

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