20: The Small Things That Shape Us

Written By Denisa Nica

What if the smallest things we do every day are shaping our life more than the biggest moments ever will?

Most of us spend our lives waiting for the breakthrough, the answer, or the moment everything finally changes. But what if the real work of transformation has been happening in the ordinary all along?

In this episode, I talk about the small things we keep returning to every day—and how they’re quietly shaping the people we’re becoming.

In this episode, we explore:

  • what is shaping your life without you even realizing it

  • why God does some of His deepest work in ordinary moments

  • the surprising shift that changes the way we think about spiritual practices

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  • I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 20.

    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, I’ll talk about the ordinary rhythms of our lives and how they’re quietly shaping us. Because whether we notice it or not, we’re always being formed. The question is: by what? Listen in.

    Sometimes a conversation ends, but the question doesn’t. That’s what happened to me this week.

    A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the truths that stay with us long enough to become part of us. Then last week, we wondered what it might look like to pay attention to the places where God is already at work.

    As I’ve kept turning those conversations over in my mind, another question slowly surfaced: “What are the ordinary things we keep returning to, actually doing to us?”

    Maybe that’s why this question feels especially important in late September. By now, the excitement of a fresh start has begun to settle. The new planner isn’t quite so new anymore. The routines we hoped would help us become more present, more patient, more faithful have quietly become… our ordinary life. And I wonder if that’s exactly where we begin to underestimate what God is doing.

    I’ve noticed something about myself over the years.  I really love rhythms. I love a plan. Give me a fresh notebook, a spreadsheet, a colour-coded calendar, and I’m probably happier than I should admit. If I decide something matters, I tend to stay with it. I’ll wake up at five o’clock every morning for a year if that’s what it takes. I don’t mind repetition. I think I secretly enjoy it.

      

    Now, if you’re listening and thinking, I am absolutely not like this, stay with me. You don’t need to love routines or colour-coded calendars for this episode to matter.

    Because whether we’re naturally structured or completely spontaneous, every one of us has an ordinary life.

    We all wake up to another Tuesday. Not the kind of Tuesday we’ll probably remember. Just an ordinary one. We all return to certain people, certain habits, certain ways of thinking, certain ways of spending our attention.

    So what are those ordinary returns slowly doing to us?

    Somewhere between dreaming and doing, I’d quietly built a life full of ordinary rhythms: morning walks, coffee, prayer, reading, writing, Sabbath on Sundays, once-a month silence and solitude Saturdays. The same things, over and over again.

    Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably true of most of us. Ordinary things rarely announce themselves as important.

    For years, I thought those rhythms were the background of my life. I never stopped to ask what all those years of returning to the same rhythms were actually doing to me.

    I assumed that if something mattered, you showed up. You stayed with it, you kept learning, and you kept going long after the excitement wore off.

    Without realizing it, I carried that same assumption into my life with God. I thought prayer worked because I prayed, Scripture worked because I read it, silence worked because I practised it.

    And if I was disciplined enough, consistent enough, faithful enough, eventually I’d become the person I wanted to be.

    Now, I don’t remember ever saying that out loud, I don’t think I ever have, but definitely believed. Or maybe believed isn’t quite the right word. It was simply the air I was breathing. I never thought to question it. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar.

    I came across a sentence from Dallas Willard that named what I couldn’t, at the time. He wrote, “Grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning.”

    And I realized I had been treating the practices of the Christian life as though they earned something from God, when all along they were invitations to be with Him.

    Turned out, God wasn’t waiting at the end of those practices, hoping I’d finally become consistent enough to deserve His attention. He was already there. Every ordinary prayer, every quiet walk, and every distracted morning when I came anyway.

    My rhythms and practices didn’t persuade Him to come closer. But they did, slowly, open my life to the God who had never left. I still find that astonishing.

    After a while something began to shift, not all at once, more like the way dawn comes. You don’t notice it at first. The room is simply a little less dark than it was before. I began to see that every time I returned to a spiritual practice, I wasn’t earning transformation. I was just returning, to the ordinary places where Jesus had already promised to meet me.

    And the funny thing is, nothing about those mornings looked especially spiritual while I was living them. They mostly looked like my actual life. The practices mattered, yes, yet they were never the source of transformation.  They were the places where I kept saying yes to the God who was already there.

    What if that’s what all those years of returning were doing -  slowly shaping us into the kind of person who trusted Him a little more, loved Him a little more, and found it a little more natural to live with Him in the ordinary rhythms of our life.

    Isn’t this how love grows though? We don’t build a friendship in one conversation. We build it by coming back, again and again.

    I noticed that many thoughtful Christian writers from very different traditions have been circling around the same mystery, even though they use different language. Some write about spiritual formation. Others write about desire. Others about ordinary liturgies. But they’re asking the same question: “What kind of person is my ordinary life quietly making me?”

    They aren’t interested in habits. I think they’re describing how love grows.

    When I look back now, I don’t think my life has been shaped by a handful of giant spiritual moments or experiences. Not even one in fact. I think I’ve been shaped by hundreds—thousands—of familiar mornings that didn’t seem important at the time.

    Morning after morning, prayer after prayer, walk after walk.

    None of it felt special while I was living them. That’s probably why I almost underestimated what God was doing through them.

    But even though none of them looked remarkable on their own, over time, they became the quiet places where God’s grace patiently shaped the person I was becoming.

    And I can’t help wondering if that’s true of all our lives too. Because this isn’t just my story, it’s the the story Scripture has been telling all along. Again and again, God chooses to form His people through  faithfulness, through ordinary day by day life.

    Think about it. We talk about this a lot here on the podcast. Israel gathered manna one morning at a time. Not enough for next week, just enough for today. Jesus taught His disciples to pray for daily bread. Tomorrow mattered, but today’s faithfulness is where we learn to trust Him. The disciples didn’t become like Jesus all at once, it happened one shared meal, one dusty road, one ordinary conversation at a time. God has always formed His people this way. Perhaps that’s because relationships have always grown this way too . Not through one big moment, but through repeated presence. We don’t become close to a friend in a single conversation. We don’t become a family through one shared meal. Love has always been formed slowly. Why would our life with God be any different?

    If you’ve been listening for a while, you’ve probably heard me use the phrase spiritual practices quite a bit. I don’t just mean prayer or reading Scripture, although I certainly mean those too. Over the years, I’ve found myself using the phrase a little more broadly. I’m thinking about all those ordinary ways we intentionally become more available to the God, who is already with us.

    For me that often looks like taking a slow walk and paying attention. Lighting a candle, keeping Sabbath, reading slowly instead of rushing, cooking a meal for people I love, looking up at the sky, sitting quietly for a few minutes before the day begins. Most of those things don’t look especially spiritual, they’re not our traditional spiritual practices. They simply help me keep company with my friend Jesus in the middle of my actual life.

    I’m told, that’s how the kingdom grows. Quietly, painfully slowly, one ordinary act of faithfulness at a time.

    So if all of this is true, I think it changes the way we think about formation altogether.

    Maybe the question isn’t simply whether we’re praying enough or reading enough or doing enough. Maybe the deeper question is this: “What is my ordinary life quietly shaping me into?”

    When you look at the ordinary rhythms of your life, what do you think they’re teaching you to love?

    Because nothing we repeatedly do, leaves us unchanged. That’s simply part of what it means to be human. Every repeated choice is forming someone. Every ordinary rhythm is shaping what we learn to love, what we instinctively trust, what captures our attention and our imagination, and what slowly begins to feel normal. Whether we realize it or not, we’re always being formed, or deformed. We aren’t only shaped by prayer. We’re shaped by worry too. Gratitude forms us. So does complaining. Forgiveness changes us, and, if we’re honest, resentment does too. Everything we repeatedly return to, quietly teaches us what to love.

    And I think that’s why the practices of the Christian life matter so much. Not because they somehow earn God’s love. We’ve already talked about that. And not because they guarantee instant transformation. They don’t.

    They matter because they are God’s gracious invitation to participate in the work He is already doing within us. That’s the difference grace makes. Grace doesn’t remove practice, grace changes why we practice.

    And that’s been one of the biggest shifts for me. I don’t wake up wondering whether I’ve done enough for God anymore. I simply come back again. I’m not trying to earn His love, yet I’m learning to trust that He has already loved me first.

    I doubt Jesus invited His followers into these ordinary practices by accident. He understands something about being human that we often forget: what we repeatedly return to, slowly becomes part of who we are.

    We no longer pray in order to become worthy of God. We pray because we already belong to Him. We don’t open Scripture hoping God will finally speak if we’ve been consistent enough. We open it because He has already spoken, and we want our lives to be shaped by His voice instead of all the others competing for our attention. We don’t keep Sabbath because God needs us to prove our trust. We keep Sabbath because, week after week, He patiently teaches us that the world keeps turning even when we stop.

    All these don’t create God’s grace. They become ordinary places where we intentionally place ourselves before the God whose grace is already at work.

    I think that might just be one of most hopeful things I’ve been learning. It’s actually been incredibly freeing for me. I don’t wake up wondering whether I had a “good” quiet time anymore. Most mornings still feel wonderfully ordinary. I simply come back again. Because I’ve begun to trust that faithfulness is never wasted, even when it doesn’t feel remarkable.

    Perhaps this conversation finds you in a season where faith feels simple and steady, or maybe it feels more complicated than it used to.

    Church has become difficult to untangle, prayer feels quiet, questions have been with you for so long they’ve started to feel like part of the furniture. Or perhaps you’re simply trying to keep turning toward Jesus, even if it looks slower and less certain than you once imagined.

    I wonder if that’s actually where some of His deepest work begins.

    Not once we’ve figured everything out, or the day we’ve finally become consistent enough. But right here, in the honest place where we bring Him what we have, instead of wishing it were more.

    If that’s where you are today, don’t mistake uncertainty for failure, and the ordinary for God’s absence. Most often faith simply grows quieter, but more rooted. And it turns out, the ordinary life we’ve been trying to get through, may have been the very place God intended to meet us all along.

    So, tomorrow morning will probably look very much like today.

    You’ll wrap your hands around the same warm mug of coffee. You’ll answer a few emails, do some laundry, pay a few bills, take the dog out for a walk, or sit in traffic. Perhaps you’ll pray, or you’ll forget. Or perhaps you’ll remember halfway through the day. None of it will feel particularly remarkable.

    But maybe… that’s exactly the point. Our life of faith  rarely happens somewhere else. It happens here. Inside this actual life that we’ve been given. Nothing offered to Christ in love is ever wasted: not another distracted prayer or another quiet walk, or another Tuesday that seems too ordinary to matter.

    So if your faith still feels quieter or smaller than you expected, don’t assume you’ve taken a wrong turn. The God who began a good work in you has never stopped forming you. And more often than not, He does His deepest work in the places we almost overlook.

    Every time we return to our friend Jesus, we’re participating in the slow work of becoming more like Him. So don’t underestimate today’s small act of faithfulness. It may feel almost invisible. But the  Spirit of God has always loved doing his work in places that look exactly like this.

    May the God who began a good work in you be faithful to complete it.

    Like the rings of a tree, the deepest work is often hidden while it’s happening. May you trust that no small turning toward God is ever wasted.

    And one day, may you look back and discover that another ring was growing all along.

    Thanks for listening to episode 20 of Walking Anyway.

    I hope this simple practice of reflecting on the ordinary rhythms of your life reminds you that they are never just ordinary. They are

    becoming places where love is slowly taking root and where God is quietly shaping the person you’re becoming.

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

    We’ve spent this episode talking about how the small things we return to shape us over time. That’s exactly why The Table exists. Not to replace your church, but to be a smaller place within the wider Christian life, where you can keep returning—bringing your actual life, your questions, your ordinary days, and learning to follow Jesus in the company of others.

    You don’t need a dramatic, big  breakthrough, more often than not, we need companions who remind us to keep returning. A place where ordinary faithfulness is enough, where you’re known, and where you don’t have to carry your spiritual life alone. If that sounds like something you’re longing for, I’d love to invite you to experience a Guest Seat at The Table. It’s a simple way to join us for three weeks, get a feel for the community, and see if it feels like a place you want to keep returning to.You’ll find all the details, along with the Guest Seat link, in the show notes.

    If this conversation felt like something you needed today, I’d love for you to come back next week. Following the show, or leaving a quick rating or review, is a simple way to help these conversations find the people who need them too.

    And if someone’s face came to mind while you were listening, maybe send this episode their way. Sometimes the kindest thing we can offer isn’t advice or answers—it’s simply saying, “I thought of you.”

    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. Just like light moving through a room— you don’t need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here.

    I’ll leave you with these words from Tish Harrison Warren: “The new life into which we are baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.”

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

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