Not The Former Things

Personal emails about life, faith, and the beautiful mess of it all.

My name is Shawna. It used to be Shawna Barnhart, but then it was Shawna Wingert. It will soon be Barnhart again.

The only name that feels like it is really mine is Shawna, so that is how I will introduce myself if you’re new to this side of my life.

Hi, I’m Shawna. I’m glad you’re here.

Past Weekly Posts From Not The Former Things

On Beginning Again
On Dying
On Fear
On Words
On Villains (and heroes too)
On Taking The Tiniest Steps
On Truth
On Waiting (my Rahab plan)
On The Good And The Bad
On Healing
On All The What-Ifs
On Hope

On Lament

On Loving and Letting Go

On Time To Lean

On Looking Back

On Sorting Through It All

On Betrayal (and trust)

On Relief (and rebuilding)

I find myself wanting to tell you about some of my personal experiences and the very real wrestling I’ve been doing as it relates to my faith, the end of my marriage, and all of the other things that make me who I am.

The past 5 years of my life (and especially the last 374 days and counting) have been a special kind of emotional and spiritual hell. The only thing that has remained a constant, throughout the undoing of everything I thought I knew to be true, is the closeness of God.

In the midst of the very worst, the Spirit has continued to whisper words of encouragement and hope – in books and in YouTube Videos, in scripture and in memes, through the love of my friends and family, through strangers on the internet, in conversations with my therapist, and in the privacy and sound dampening cavern of my car, parked in the darkness of my garage – the only place I really allow myself to lose it, hoping to spare my children the guttural sounds of grief and despair.

The only constant in my life for a while now has been my complicated, deeply personal faith.
I miss sharing my faith. I did it for years under the same title, “Not The Former Things” as a way of working through the challenges of motherhood and special needs homeschooling.

For better or worse, I have so much I want to share. Some of it is really sad. Almost all of it is messy. Maybe, just maybe, it can be helpful and encouraging as well.

I am ready to begin again.

Please, join me.