14: The Unfinished Summer

Written By Denisa Nica

If you’ve been carrying around the quiet weight of what you didn’t get done this summer, you’re not alone.

Why do unfinished things sometimes feel so much heavier than they should?

We explore why—and discover the unexpected invitation hidden inside an unfinished season. Maybe the unfinished thing isn’t the whole story.

In this episode, we explore:

  • why unfinished things can quietly begin carrying more weight than they should

  • why finishing and faithfulness aren’t always the same thing

  • the unexpected invitation hidden inside an unfinished season

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  • I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 14.

    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 the difference between what’s unfinished and what we’v made it mean. Turns out, those aren’t always the same thing.Listen in.

    One morning last week, I reached over to move the glass of water on my bedside table, and there it was. The memoir I’d started back in June. The bookmark hadn’t moved in weeks.

    If you receive my monthly letters, you know that every month I include a few of the books I’m reading. People often ask me for recommendations, and somewhere along the way I’ve realized that reading and writing belong together. As a writer, I have to read. Or maybe it’s that, as a reader, I have to write. I’m still not entirely sure which comes first, but I know they seem to need each other.

    This particular book is a memoir called Selfish. My friend Roxana brought it back for me from a trip to New York in May, and I couldn’t wait to begin it. I started reading it in June. Then July arrived. My brother and his family came to visit. In August, my summer Sabbath began. As you’re listening to this, we’re spending some time in Romania with my parents.

    When I noticed the bookmark sitting exactly where I’d left it, I let out one of those quiet little sighs you barely notice until you’ve already done it. There was a tiny tug of guilt as I sat there for a second looking at it, wondering why this little unfinished book seemed to be carrying so much more than a bookmark.

    I’ve been wondering why unfinished things can come to mean so much more than they are.

    Because if I’m honest, I don’t think it was really about the book.

    Somehow that little book had become tangled up with the story I was telling myself about the summer.

    Back in June, at the beginning of the summer, I made a little list.

    Nothing too ambitious, just a page in my notebook with things I hoped I would do this summer, books I wanted to read and a few things around the house I wanted to finally get around to, like reorganizing a couple of kitchen cupboards that somehow never seem to stay organized for very long. Going through some of the clothes I still haven’t sorted since moving to Spain because, as it turns out, living by the Mediterranean requires a very different wardrobe than living in Vancouver. Little things like that.

    It wasn’t really a to-do list, it was more like a bullet style picture of the summer I hoped I was walking into, back in June.

    Looking at that page now, I get this sense that back in June, I wasn’t looking at a list. It feels more like when I wrote those things down, I looking at the woman I thought I’d be by the end of the summer.

    Maybe you had your own little list too. Not necessarily written down, maybe it was just somewhere in the back of your mind.

    A picture of what you thought this summer might look like.

    And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think it’s something most of us do. Maybe it’s a new year, a birthday, a  holiday you’ve been looking forward to, the beginning of a new job, a move. Or any season that seems as though it might finally give us a little more room.

    Without even realizing it, we begin imagining the person we’ll be by the end of the season.

    Every June, I seem to believe there’ll be just a little more room than there actually is: a little more margin, a little more energy.

    Somehow, a little more of me to go around.

    Maybe that’s simply what hope does. It lets us begin.

    And somewhere along the way, the list stops feeling like a list. It becomes a snapshot of the person we expect to meet by the end of that particular season.

    Maybe I wasn’t really disappointed that I hadn’t finished the book. Or that the cupboards were still waiting. Maybe I was disappointed because I hadn’t become the version of myself I thought I’d be by the second week of August.

    I wonder if you’ve ever felt that too. Not disappointed in the summer itself, but in the version of yourself you thought you’d meet inside it.

    There’s a difference between an unfinished season and a wasted one. I think we confuse those two far more often than we realize.

    And maybe that’s a grief there we don’t often know we’re allowed to name.

    But what if we’ve confused finishing with faithfulness?

    Now, I want to be a little careful here because I don’t want you to hear me saying, “Well then, I guess nothing really needs to be finished.” That’s not what I’m saying.

    Sometimes, many times, faithfulness does mean carrying something all the way to the end. Keeping a promise. Showing up when you’d rather not. Remaining when it’s hard. Finishing what we’ve actually been given to do.

    Sometimes finishing and faithfulness are exactly the same thing.

    But not always.

    And I wonder if part of the work of discernment is learning when they are and when they aren’t.

    Because sometimes faithfulness looks different.

    Sometimes it looks like receiving the summer we’ve actually been given instead of trying to force it into the shape of the summer we imagined.

    Because what if trusting God isn’t believing that I’ll eventually finish the book, or finally become the woman I hoped I’d be by the second week of August?

    What if trusting God is believing that God has been at work in me all along…even while the bookmark stayed between the same two pages?

    Isn’t it true, though, that the hardest part isn’t that we didn’t finish the book, or the project, or whatever it is that’s still sitting on your own list?

    The hardest part is believing that God hasn’t stepped away from the story.

    That He’s just as present in an unfinished summer as He is in one where we crossed everything off the list.

    I wonder if trusting God begins by receiving the life we’re actually living instead of the one we imagined we’d be living by now.

    Because here’s something I’ve noticed about God. He always seems to meet people where they are.

    I’ve always loved that moment after the resurrection when Jesus meets Peter by the sea. Peter has denied Him. And when they meet for the very first tome after that, Jesus doesn’t begin with Peter’s failure. He begins by cooking fish and making breakfast.

    Jesus meets Peter in the life Peter is actually living that day.

    The Peter who had come ashore that morning.

    I’ve been thinking about Peter coming ashore that morning and finding Jesus making breakfast, and I wonder if that’s the invitation for us.

    Can we receive this summer the way Jesus received Peter? Not the summer we imagined back in June. The one we actually lived.

    Can we receive the version of ourselves that actually lived this summer?

    The one who didn’t become who we thought we’d be by the second week of August. The one who didn’t finish the book. Who still has things left on the list. Who ran out of time. Or energy. Or simply discovered that real life rarely unfolds the way we imagined it would.

    I’m beginning to think that this what it may mean to bless an unfinished summer. Not pretending it was different than it was.

    Not rushing toward September as though August has nothing left to give. Not squeezing a few more accomplishments into the last weeks just so we can tell ourselves the summer wasn’t wasted. But receiving it.  And receiving ourselves, with the same kindness Jesus received Peter that morning.

    May there be no shame in what remains unfinished. Of course we hoped. Of course there's grief.

    May we receive the version of ourselves that actually lived this summer.

    May we receive ourselves with even a small measure of the kindness with which Christ has already received us.

    And may that be enough for today.

    Amen.

    Thanks for listening to episode 14 of Walking Anyway.

    I hope this simple practice of receiving your unfinished summer helps you find grace in the life you’re already living, so that, little by little, you can keep walking anyway.

    At the beginning of the episode I mentioned my monthly letters

    Over the past few years, they’ve quietly become a small community of people learning to notice God in the middle of ordinary life.

    It’s where this conversation continues.

    At the end of each month, I send a letter looking back before we step into the next one. I share a few reflection questions, the books that have been shaping me, and the conversations and stories I don’t share anywhere else.

    If that sounds like the kind of companion you’d like on the journey, I’d love to welcome you. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

    Because the way you’re walking through this, is already forming something steady in you. If this episode resonated with you, 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. And if someone came to mind while you were listening today, maybe send this episode to them too.

    As always, you can find me at denisaonica.com., on Substack 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.

    I’ll leave you with a few words from Henri Nouwen that have accompanied me for many years, from his book Life of The Beloved: “The spiritual life is the gradual claiming of the truth that I am the Beloved.”

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

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