07: When It Doesn't Feel the Way You Thought It Would

What do you do when your life looks different than the version you once imagined for yourself?

If you’ve been feeling disappointed, disoriented, quietly lonely, or wondering why adulthood an especially midlife, feels harder or more ordinary than you expected, this episode might feel familiar.

In this episode, I talk about returning to Romania after almost twenty-five years away — and the strange realization that going back is not the same thing as recovering what was lost. We explore disappointment, changing relationships, midlife expectations, and what it means to stay tender inside a life that hasn’t unfolded the way you thought it would.

In this episode:
 – the grief of unmet expectations
 – why disappointment can quietly harden us
 – how to name what hurts without rushing to fix it

If this is where you are right now, this episode might help you stay honest, hopeful, and a little less alone.

Links + Resources From This Episode:

• Start with a 21-day Guest Seat at The Table
• Find me on Instagram @denisa.o.nica
• Listening to Your Life, by Frederick Buechner 
• Download a transcript of this, and every episode at www.denisaonica.com

Find Denisa Elsewhere:

• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Order Kairos, When The Holy Meets The Daily
• Join Denisa's Substack
• Get the monthly letter

Episode Website

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

I'm Denisa Nica and welcome to Walking Anyway. You're listening to Episode 7.

Speaker 0:08

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. Each week I offer a reflection and a simple way to faithfully walk one more step.

Speaker 0:35

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. This week I'll share a story about returning to a place I had spent more than 20 years missing, and what I'm slowly learning about disappointment, adulthood, and how to stay tender and faithful when life doesn't feel the way you thought it would. Listen in.

Speaker 1:22

A few years ago, after living in Canada for almost 25 years, I spent about a year and a half back in my native country, Romania. We didn't move straight to Spain after leaving Canada. My daughter and I went ahead to Romania first, while Daniel stayed behind for a while to finish wrapping things up there. And honestly, I think part of me had quietly romanticized that season for years without fully realizing it. I thought he would feel meaningful in this deep, healing sort of way. I imagined long conversations with my parents, familiar streets, and endless coffee dates with all friends where we would somehow slip right back into ourselves again. And maybe underneath all that was this idea that one day I would finally have enough time. Enough time with my parents, with friends, and frankly, enough time to somehow make up for all the years I had missed while living across the ocean. But when I got there, I realized pretty quickly that nothing really felt the way I thought it would. And of course it didn't. Twenty-something years had passed.

Speaker 2:42

Everybody's lives had continued while I was away, mine included. Even the country itself felt different. There were giant malls now and trendy coffee shops with oat milk, which honestly felt emotionally unnecessary to me at the time. And I think somewhere deep down I had unconsciously imagined that everybody would sort of pause emotionally because I had returned after all these years. Which sounds a bit dramatic now that I'm saying it out loud, but apparently that was the emotional plan. Instead, people had school drop-offs and grocery shopping and jobs and tiredness and regular Tuesday responsibilities. I remember sitting upstairs in my old bedroom at my parents' house after trying to call a few people to meet for coffee and realizing nobody really had time. I would sit there on the edge of the bed, hearing dishes downstairs and feeling the strange loneliness I had not expected to feel there of all places. My dad would be outside in the garden, messing with tomato plants and hoses, while I carried this quiet hope that we would somehow recover all those lost years through long, meaningful conversations. And my mom stayed busy too, sweeping floors and hanging laundry outside and moving through very ordinary routines while I sat there thinking, hello, I'm here now. I came back. Does anybody notice? My brother lived there too by then with his family, and some mornings I honestly couldn't tell whether he had actually said good morning or had just sighed near the coffee machine downstairs. Which felt strange because he had been the sibling who cried the day Daniel came to our home to ask my parents' blessing to marry me and take me away on the other side of the planet all those years ago.

Speaker 4:40

And I don't think I realized until much later that part of what hurt so much was recognizing that my leaving had been more final for them than it had ever been for me. I had carried the relationship different all those years. I carried memory and longing and imagined reunions, but they had continued living ordinary life. Which to be fair is exactly what people are supposed to do. Still, I remember feeling this constant ache. I don't even know if grief is exactly the right word. It was more the strange realization that returning is not the same thing as recovering. And honestly, I think disappointment often feels like that. Not always dramatic or catastrophic. Sometimes it's just the slow realization that your life feels different than the version you once imagined for yourself. Or it's looking around at your Tuesday afternoon and realizing adulthood feels much more ordinary and tiring than you thought it would when you were younger.

Speaker 5:47

I hear it can also show up in your body. You realize your energy is different now, or your knees suddenly start making decisions without consulting you first. And we're not talking about that moment when you catch your reflection somewhere unexpectedly honest, like a store window, your phone camera, the bathroom mirror at 10 p.m., and think, huh. Apparently I'm tired around the eyes now in a way that expensive concealer can't fully solve. Sometimes it's marriage or parenting an adult child, or work that no longer feels meaningful in the same way. Or maybe friendships changing quietly over time, or faith feeling more complicated than you thought it would by this point in your life. And I think for a lot of people, the pandemic brought some of this to the surface too. Not only grief, but disappointment in institutions, in systems we thought were steadier than they turned out to be. And even disappointment, or should I say, especially in each other.

Speaker 6:56

I think a lot of us realized the world felt less stable than we thought it was. Or maybe you thought healing would happen faster by now. You thought you would feel more settled, more emotionally healthy, spiritually mature, and a little more sure of yourself. And what makes disappointment especially lonely is that sometimes nothing is obviously wrong. From the outside, your life may even look pretty good to other people. You may still love the people in it and still feel grateful for parts of it.

Speaker 7:34

And still there's this quieter ache underneath everything. I really thought it would feel different than this. I think many of us move away from that feeling very quickly because we're afraid it would make us sound ungrateful or like a drama queen, or God forbid, spiritually mature. Ronald Rollheiser, in a book I love called Holy Longing, says we get into trouble whenever we don't name things properly.

Speaker 8:05

And I keep saying this, but I do wonder if part of spiritual maturity is becoming honest enough to admit what is actually true about our lives right now, even when it's uncomfortable or disappointing or unfinished. But Denisa, what does this actually mean? Well, how about like not polishing the story too quickly or rushing toward the lesson? Not immediately trying to turn the pain into something inspirational before we've even sat with it, honestly and properly. Naming disappointment doesn't automatically mean your life is bad. Sometimes it simply means something mattered deeply to you, something you hoped for or something you loved or that you thought would feel different once you finally arrive there. And I think there's something deeply compassionate about becoming curious about your own life instead of immediately turning every disappointment into a verdict about yourself. And maybe part of what makes disappointment so disorienting is that we spend so much energy trying to force life into the shape we expected that we stop listening to the life that is actually here, the life we are actually living, sitting right in front of us. The one life we have where God is somehow still present in, even now.

Speaker 9:35

Parker Palmer once wrote, Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. And if I'm honest, disappointment has probably taught me things I would not have learned any other way. It has shown me what still matters to me, what I'm grieving, what still feels tender, and what I still long for. And when disappointment sits too long in the dark without being acknowledged, I think something in us slowly starts shutting down. Gradually, we get a little more cynical than we used to be. A little more numb, a little more quietly angry at the world. I have seen this in myself and I've seen it in others, and especially in my work as a spiritual director. We stop expecting beauty in ordinary places. We lose some of our imagination for who God is and for our own lives. And hope starts to feel embarrassing somehow. Henry Nouwen, one of my favorite authors, wrote often about accepting the unwanted realities of life without losing tenderness. And honestly, that feels like one of the hardest spiritual practices there is. Not the imagined life, not the life we thought we would be living by now. This one, the real one. Here's the practice for this week. Don't worry, we're not starting a five-step healing plan, or ask you to journal for an hour or somehow try to become a better or more evolved person by next Tuesday. I promise. Just this.

Speaker 11:58

Imagine we're sitting across from each other having coffee. You order whatever you order. I'll probably order something decaf and unnecessarily complicated because apparently this is who I am now. And I look at you and ask gently, what in your life does not feel the way you thought it would? And before you clean it up or explain it or try to sound spiritually mature, just notice what comes to mind first. Maybe it surprises you. Maybe it doesn't. And maybe instead of carrying that disappointment around silently by yourself, you say it somewhere safe. Like to Jesus or to a trusted friend, to a spiritual director, maybe even just out loud while driving home with your hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. Because if we're honest, anxiety still does that to some of us. You don't need to know the Bible from cover to cover to turn something into a prayer. Sometimes prayer is simply saying, Jesus, this part right here does not feel the way I thought he would. And then letting yourself sit there for a minute without rushing to solve it. In all of this, I think I'm slowly learning that the disappointing parts of our lives aren't spiritually meaningless. God doesn't disappear from the unfinished parts of our stories. The holy is still present in the ordinary Tuesday afternoons that don't look the way we thought they would. And who knows, maybe this isn't the whole story yet. And for now, maybe that is enough.

Speaker 13:54

Thanks for listening to episode 7 of Walking Anyway. I hope this practice of sitting across the table with me for a moment, answering honestly what you thought would be different by now, and then letting that disappointment be spoken somewhere safe. In prayer with a trusted person, or simply out loud for the first time, helps you feel a little less alone inside your real life and a little more able to stay tender, hopeful, and awake to the story God is still writing here. Because the way you're walking through this, right in the middle of what hasn't settled yet, what didn't turn the way you thought it would, and the parts of your life that feels unfinished, is already forming something steady in you.

Speaker 14:43

If you're wanting a place to actually practice this, not just think about it, you can begin with a 21-day guest seat inside The Table. It's a quiet, gentle space where you learn to stay with God in your real life, including these disappointing parts, unfinished or harder than you expected parts, where you can tell the truth about your life without needing to perform hopefulness and where you don't have to do that on your own.

Speaker 15:12

As always, you can find me at denisaonica.com or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica. I'd love to see you there. Now 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.

Speaker 15:39

I'll close with a few words from Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner. "Listen to your life. Seed for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness. Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it. Because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."

Speaker 16:18

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