# Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist >[!Abstract] Description > New York Times bestselling author Shauna Niequist invites you to look at the landscape of your own life, consider how it might feel to leave behind the pressure to be perfect, and begin the practice of simply being present in the middle of the mess. A few years ago, Shauna found herself exhausted and isolated, her soul and body sick. She was tired of being tired and burned out on busy. It seemed like almost everyone she talked to was in the same boat: longing for connection, meaning, and depth, but settling for busy. But then something changed. She decided to trade the hustle and bustle for grace, love, stillness, and play, and it changed everything. Shauna offers an honest account of what led her to begin this journey and a compelling vision for an entirely new way to live: soaked in rest, silence, simplicity, prayer, and connection with the people who matter most to us. As you witness Shauna's journey, you'll be inspired to embark on one of your own. She gives you the encouragement you need to: Put an end to people-pleasing tendencies Embrace moments of simplicity, quiet, and stillness Accept that you are worthy of love, belonging, and joy Written in Shauna's warm and vulnerable style, this collection of essays focuses on the most important transformation in her life, and maybe yours too: leaving behind busyness and frantic living and rediscovering the person you were made to be. Present Over Perfect is a hand reaching out, pulling you free from the constant pressure to perform faster, push harder, and produce more while maintaining an exhausting image of perfection. Join the over 500,000 others who have already started walking this new path away from frantic pushing and proving and toward their true selves. In a world where we are told that we can have it all, so many of us take this as something we *have* to aspire to. That we *should* live up to. It’s no longer seen an option. But is instead, a mandatory social condition. And so that’s what I did. I worked to have it all. And it was something I aspired to. For years. Even when my my body was screaming at me to stop, to rest, still I strived. Afraid of what would happen, of what people would think of me, if I did stop. But after years of being pulled in so many directions, I had lost my sense of self. I began to feel confused, lost, resentful. I was exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. And I had no idea how to get out off the ladder I had been climbing. Then Covid hit and lockdown meant that I didn’t need to be anywhere other than at home with my boys. For the first time in years I stopped. And I cried. But it wasn’t because of Covid or the uncertainties that it brought with it. I cried because I was relieved. I cried because I could finally breathe again. I cried because the moment I let my body and my mind become still, I found my way home to myself. I know everyone’s experience of Covid and lockdown are different. But this was mine. During this time I started reading again. Not textbooks. But books that made me stop and think. That made me reflect on the world and my place within it. One of the books I read was ‘Present Over Perfect’ by Shauna Niequist. And it taught me so much about what I had been feeling over the past few years. I read it over and over. I savoured every word. And I let it fill my soul. It helped me figure out what had been happening. What I wanted my life to be like. And what I needed to do. This book was “a thousand invitations, springing up from every page” calling me to leave behind “the heavy weight of comparison, competition, and exhaustion, and to recraft a life marked by meaning, connection, and unconditional love." And this is exactly what happened. %% # Notes ### how I have lived the first half of my life is not how I want to live the second half > “Richard Rohr says the skills that take you through the first half of your life are entirely unhelpful for the second half. To press the point a little bit: those skills I developed that supposedly served me well for the first half, as I inspect them a little more closely, didn’t actually serve me at all.” > “I’m not, by any means, at the end of this journey. But I have traveled this beautiful new road far enough to know that this is how I want to live the rest of my days. I’m almost forty, feeling midlife-y like crazy, and this is how I want to live the second half of my life.” - As Shauna Niequist says “I’m almost forty, feeling midlife-y like crazy”. - I don't want to continue pushing myself the way I have the last 20+ years. - I want things to be different in this second half of my life. - Things need to change. --- ### I was trying to be all things to all people > “Oh, the things I did to my body and my spirit in order to maintain my reputation as a high-capacity person. Oh, the moments I missed with people I love because I was so very committed to being known as the strongest of the strong.” > “It is better to be loved than admired. It is better to be truly known and seen and taken care of by a small tribe than adored by strangers who think they know you in a meaningful way. We know that’s true. But many of us, functionally, have gotten that math wrong in one season or another.” > “This is what I know: I’ve always been a more is more person, and something shifted this summer. Something inside me said no more.” - I was trying to be all things to all people. - As a result I was anxious all the time, I was missing moments with the people I love, and my body was screaming at me to rest. --- ### I believed it was better to measure my life by metrics out there, instead of values deeply held in my own soul and spirit. > “I’ve always trusted things outside myself, believing that my own voice couldn’t be trusted, that my own preferences and desires would lead me astray, that it was far wiser and safer to listen to other people—other voices, the voices of the crowd. I believed it was better to measure my life by metrics out there, instead of values deeply held in my own soul and spirit.” > “What an easy escape, into people who think you’re great and work that makes you feel valuable. I can master my laptop in a way that I cannot master parenting. I can control my publishing schedule and my deadlines in a way that I cannot control our marriage.” - What mattered to me was what other people thought about me. - After all, It’s hard to feel ‘successful’ when looking after children. --- ### The hustle will never make me feel the way I want to feel. > “I knew that I needed to work less. That’s absolutely true. That’s the first step. But it’s trickier than that: the internal voice that tells me to hustle can find a to-do list in my living room as easily as it can in an office. It’s not about paid employment. It’s about trusting that the hustle will never make you feel the way you want to feel. In that way, it’s a drug, and I fall for the initial rush every time: if I push enough, I will feel whole. I will feel proud, I will feel happy. What I feel, though, is exhausted and resentful, but with well-organized closets.” > “I can’t hear the voice of love when I’m hustling. All I can hear are my own feet pounding the pavement, and the sound of other runners about to overtake me, beat me. But competition has no place in my life anymore. The stillness reminds me of that.“ - To be successful you need grit. Hard work. Hustle. - You need to push and strive. Right? - But there came a point when I knew that something was missing. - That no matter how much I did, it would never be enough. - It would never make me feel the way I want to feel. --- ### The person I was dragging back to our home, week after week, was a poor substitute for the wife and mother I wanted to be. > “I knew better than to let our family suffer. My regret, though, and it is sizable and tender, is that I let myself suffer and deteriorate, body and soul, and it’s naïve to think that didn’t have profoundly negative effects on my children and my husband. I know it did. I cared for all three of them the best I could, but the person I was dragging back to our home, week after week, was a poor substitute for the wife and mother I wanted to be. I was not well, but I was very, very productive. And it didn’t occur to me to stop.” - Being productive, being successful, has it’s limits. - We only have so much to give. - So much energy. So much time. - I had things all wrong. --- ### If I work in such a way that I don’t have enough energy to give to my family, things need to change. > “Being good at something feels great. Playing ninja turtles with two little boys for hours on end is sometimes less great. It’s so easy to hop on a plane or say yes to one more meeting or project, to get that little buzz of being good at something, or the pleasure bump of making someone happy, or whatever it is that drives you. And many of us continue to pretend we don’t have a choice—the success just happened, and we’re along for the ride. The opportunities kept coming, and anyone in our position would have jumped to meet them. But we’re the ones who keep putting up the chairs. If I work in such a way that I don’t have enough energy to give to my marriage, I need to take down some chairs. If I say yes to so many work things that my kids only get to see tired mommy, I need to take down some chairs.” > “That idea, though, of the legacy I’m leaving is rattling around in my brain and my heart. I’ve preferred to believe that I can be all things to all people, but when I’m honest about my life, in the past couple years I’ve been better from a distance than I have been in my own home—I’ve given more to strangers and publishers and people who stand in line after events than I have to my neighbors, my friends. I come home weary and self-protective, pulled into a shell of exhaustion and depleted emotions. This is, to be clear, not the legacy I want to leave.” > “And many of us are too exhausted from the work we love to get down on the floor with our toddlers, or stay in the second hour of a difficult conversation with our spouses. It seems to me that one of the great hazards is quick love, which is actually charm. We get used to smiling, hugging, bantering, practicing good eye contact. And it’s easier than true, slow, awkward, painful connection with someone who sees all the worst parts of you. Your act is easy. Being with you, deeply with, is difficult.” - I was working all the time. - Trying to prove myself. - Thinking that the more I did, the better I could make things for my family. - And yet, all they were left with was an exhausted, resentful version of me. --- ### I came to realise that I was climbing someone else’s ladder > “I’ve been working all my life. Work has been a through line, one that I’m very thankful for, one that has taught me so much about the benefits of structure, discipline, skill, communication, and responsibility. But at some point, good clean work became something else: an impossible standard to meet, a frantic way of living, a practice of ignoring my body and my spirit in order to prove myself as the hardest of hard workers. As I unravel the many things that brought me to this crisis point, one is undeniably my own belief that hard work can solve anything, that pushing through is always the right thing, that rest and slowness are for weak people, not for high-capacity people like me.” > “When you devote yourself to being known as the most responsible person anyone knows, more and more people call on you to be that highly responsible person. That’s how it works. So the armload of things I was carrying became higher and higher, heavier and heavier, more and more precarious. At the same time, I was more and more aware that I was miserable. Not all the time, of course, but sometimes, in those rare moments when I let myself really feel honestly instead of filling in the right answers, I realized with great surprise that this way of living was not making me happy at all.” - This way of living was not making me happy at all. - We climb a ladder with the idea that once we ‘make it’, then we will be happy. - But I came to realise that I was climbing someone else’s ladder. - And I was not happy. --- ### Past the disdain, past the envy, what I find is longing. > “And in my most ground-down moments, I looked over at my friend’s life and I saw that she was . . . playing. Sheesh. Connecting. Please. Resting. Come on. Asking for help. What a baby. That’s how it starts, at least for me. With disdain. A lot of “sheesh”-ing. Because if I can discount her, then I don’t have to grapple with my own feelings about her life compared to mine. But I’ve been down this road enough to know how well it can instruct me if I let it. And so I cracked down through the disdain to see what was underneath, and I wasn’t surprised, at this point, to find pure envy.” > “When I allowed myself to tiptoe past the disdain, past the envy, what I found was longing. I was longing for a life that felt light, right-sized for my strengths and limitations. This was never about her. This was about me. So I set to work on making my life look more like my longings, and along that path, I found my jealousy dissipating.” > “My disdain and jealousy brought me to change my life, because I know that sometimes the darkest parts of us can be our teachers in ways that our sweeter qualities never could. What makes you say, “Must be nice”? What longing might your jealousy lead you to, if you’re brave enough to listen to it before you push it away?” - I would look at other people and envy what they had. - But it wasn’t the ones with money. - Or the ones with authority. - It was the people who had stillness. - Who had simplicity. - Who ‘wasted’ time on things they loved. - I realised that I was jealous because I was unhappy with the life I had created. - And ashamed to admit it. --- ### How do we admit when things get too heavy? > “One friend said that a way to get at your desire or dream is to answer this question: if someone gave you a completely blank calendar and a bank account as full as you wanted, what would you do? The first thing that leapt into my mind: stop. I would stop. I would rest. I would do nothing at all. I would sleep. The thought of it almost made me weep.” > “There we were, women in our thirties. Educated, married, mothers, women who have careers, who manage homes and oversee companies. And there we were, utterly resigned to lives that feel overly busy and pressurized, disconnected and exhausted. But that’s shifting the blame, right? Who’s the boss, if not us? Who’s forcing us to live this way? Or, possibly, do we not want to face the answer to that question, preferring to believe we can’t possibly be held responsible for what we’ve done?” > “It sounded so familiar to me—like the story I’d heard from so many dear friends in the last couple years. I don’t know if it’s a mid-thirties thing, or a married-more-than-a-dozen-years thing, but it’s happening all around us. And when you look at the story in reverse, you see a thousand little choices that yielded the wreckage.” > “This is what I call fake-resting. I’m wearing pajamas. The kids are watching cartoons, snuggling under blankets, eating waffles. Aaron’s reading or sleeping. It looks like I’m resting, too. But I’m not. I’m ticking down an endless list, sometimes written, always mental, getting things back into their right spots, changing the laundry, wiping down the countertops. Some might say this is being a mother, or a homemaker, or this is what women have been doing for generations: tending to the home stuff while men and children go about their leisure. Maybe so, but this woman and mom is exhausted. And tired of being exhausted.” - I was burned out (and I’m not alone!) - The more women I speak to about burnout the more I see nodding heads and sad smiles. - We are exhausted. - And yet we don’t know what to do about it. - We have built these lives for ourselves. - How do we admit when things get too heavy? - And how do we deal with the shame that comes with it? --- ### [[burnout is not reserved for the rich or the famous or the profoundly successful]] > “Part of the crazy of it is that we don’t allow people to fall apart unless they’re massively successful. You can’t be just a normal lady with a normal job and burn yourself out—that’s only for bigshot people. And so the normal, exhausted, soul-starved people keep going, because we’re not special enough to burn out. Burnout is not reserved for the rich or the famous or the profoundly successful. It’s happening to so many of us, people across all kinds of careers and lifestyles.” ^8db9d2 ### [[if the life you’ve crafted for yourself is too heavy, it’s too heavy]] > “If you’re tired, you’re tired, no matter what. If the life you’ve crafted for yourself is too heavy, it’s too heavy, no matter if the people on either side of you are carrying more or less” - Shauna Niequist ^858a1b --- ### Just because you have the capacity to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it > “You don’t have to sacrifice your spirit, your joy, your soul, your family, your marriage on the altar of ministry. Just because you have the capacity to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Management, organization, speaking and traveling: you must ask not only what fruit they bring to the world, but what fruit they yield on the inside of your life and your heart.” > “I gave myself away indiscriminately. Be careful how much of yourself you give away, even with the best of intentions. There are things you cannot get back.” > “Let’s do so much more than simply please people. Let’s see them and love them and delight them, look deeply into their eyes. Pleasing is a shallow and temporary joy, not nearly as valuable or rich as seeing or connecting or listening.” - When we’re good at what we do we feel that we should do more of it. - But just because we can, doesn’t mean we have to. - I didn’t know this. - I didn’t know I had a choice. - I was being asked to do more and more. - And I said yes. Yes. Yes. - I wanted to make people happy. To please them. --- ### What people think about you means nothing in comparison to what you believe about yourself. >“The world will tell you how to live, if you let it. Don’t let it. Take up your space. Raise your voice. Sing your song. This is your chance to make or remake a life that thrills you.” >“This is what I’ve learned the hard way: what people think about you means nothing in comparison to what you believe about yourself.” - - I didn’t know that what I though about myself mattered. - How wrong I was. - What we believe about ourselves changes how we see the world and everything we do in our life. --- ### I never know I need quiet and stillness until it’s too late. > “The more I listen to myself, my body, my feelings, and the less I listen to the “should” and “must” and “to-do” voices, the more I realize my body and spirit have been whispering all along, but I couldn’t hear them over the chaos and noise of the life I’d created. I was addicted to this chaos, but like any addiction, it was damaging to me.” > “I never know I need quiet and stillness until it’s too late, till the lack of stillness scrapes me raw.” > “For so many years, I was deeply invested in people knowing that I was a very competent, capable, responsible person. I needed them to know that about me, because if that was true about me, I believed, I would be safe and happy. If I was responsible and hardworking, I would be safe and happy. Fast forward to a deeply exhausted and resentful woman, disconnected from her best friends, trying so darned hard to keep being responsible, but all at once, unable. Something snapped, and my anger outweighed my precious competence. Something fundamental had to change.” - Tonsillitis. Quincy. Chest infections. Jaw pain. - That’s my body screaming at me when I can’t hear it over the noise and chaos in my life. - Or maybe it’s when I’ve refused to listen. --- ### Should is one of my warning signs > “What should have delighted me instead made me afraid. And I know that should is one of my warning signs—that frequently I pay more attention to how I should feel about something than how I actually do feel about it.” - ‘Should’. - A warning sign that we’re doing what we think is right. - What we think the world expects. - Instead of what is true within us. --- ### Being an adult is taking responsibility for resting your body and your soul. > “Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for resting your body and your soul. And part of being an adult is learning to meet your own needs, because when it comes down to it, with a few exceptions, no one else is going to do it for you.” > “When you decide, finally, to stop running on the fuel of anxiety, desire to prove, fear, shame, deep inadequacy—when you decide to walk away from that fuel for a while, there’s nothing but confusion and silence. You’re on the side of the road, empty tank, no idea what will propel you forward. It’s disorienting, freeing, terrifying. For a while, you just sit, contentedly, and contentment is the most foreign concept you know. But you learn it, shocking as it is, day by day, hour by hour. You sit in your own skin, being just your own plain self. And it’s okay. And it’s changing everything." - Who is going to take care of us if we don’t? - And how can we pour for others if our own cup is empty? - What is the other saying? - You need to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. - We are the ones responsible for our own health and happiness. --- ### No is a complete sentence > “The word that changed everything, of course, is no. I’d been saying yes and yes and yes, indiscriminately, haphazardly, resentfully for years. And I realized all at once that I’d spent all my yeses, and in order to find peace and health in my life, I needed to learn to say no.” > “I’m finding that one of the greatest delights in life is walking away from what someone told you you should be in favor of walking toward what you truly love, in your own heart, in your own secret soul.” > “No won’t always be the word you use most often. I hate that for a season, no had to be the answer to almost everything. But over time, when you rebuild a life that’s the right size and dimension and weight, full of the things you’re called to, emptied of the rest, then you do get to live some yes again. But for a while, no is what gets you there.” - No is a complete sentence and one that I’ve used over and over again lately. - If it's not been a ‘Hell yeah' it’s been a no. --- ### You have to stop doing a whole lot of things to learn what it is you really love, who it is you really are. > “To be sure, finding your purpose can take a long time to figure out, and along the way it is tempting to opt instead for the immediate gratification, the immediate fix, of someone’s approval. But the sweet rush of approval, the pat on the head, can often derail us from real love, and real purpose.” > “What I’m learning is that you have to stop doing a whole lot of things to learn what it is you really love, who it is you really are. Many of us go years and years without even asking these questions, because the lives we’ve fallen into have told us exactly who to be and what to love and what to give ourselves to.” - I was so grateful for Covid. - I know how twisted and unusual that is. - But lockdown meant I *had* to stop. - I had no choice. - And it gave me the chance to find out what I really love, who I am and what I want. --- ### We don’t all love the same things > “One thing I learned (which seems massively obvious in hindsight): we don’t all love the same things. Look at your deepest dreams, and who you’ve always been—the things you love even though no one else does, the times in your life when you feel the most beautiful, even if no one else thinks so.” > “This life you’re building is entirely your creation, fashioned out of your dreams and fears. What do you want? What do you love? What ways of living have you simply acquiesced to, because someone told you to? Because it seemed smart or practical or easy? Are those the best words to describe how you want to live? If I’m honest, I let words like responsible and capable govern many of my years. And what good are they? Words that I’m choosing in this season: passion, connection, meaning, love, grace, spirit.” Around 6 years ago I came to the realisation that, not only am I introverted but I am highly sensitive. This means that the things that I see other people enjoying send me into a state of panic. I thought there was something wrong with me. There isn’t. Introverts just recharge their batteries differently to extroverts. --- ### What I’m leaving behind in this season is the need to please everyone. > “What I’m leaving behind in this season is the need to please everyone. I want to respect all people. I want to learn from all people, most especially people who are different from me and who disagree with me, but pleasing, for me, is over.” > “You get to make your life. In fact, you have to. And not only can you make it, you can remake it.” > “I will spend my life on meaning, on connection, on love, on freedom. I will not waste one more day trapped in comparison, competition, proving, and earning. That’s the currency of a culture that has nothing to offer me.” - I’d like to say I have this figured out. - But I don’t. - I still compare myself. - I’m afraid of letting people down. - And I want people to like me. - But I’m learning to not give as many fucks. --- ### The legacy I care most about is the one I’m creating with the people who know me best. > “The legacy I care most about is the one I’m creating with the people who know me best—my children, my husband, my best friends. And I have to make a change.” > “I needed to know who should get the best of my energy: my boys or a company that asked me to speak for them. I needed to know what matters. And the image of that man in his tuxedo was all I needed. You will always regret something. You will always disappoint someone. But it isn’t going to be my husband and our boys. It has been, sometimes. But I’m learning. And I’m making things right.” - As the quote below says, “You will always regret something. - You will always disappoint someone. - But it isn’t going to be my husband and our boys. - It has been, sometimes. But I’m learning. And I’m making things right.” --- ### Sometimes brave looks boring. > “Brave doesn’t always involve grand gestures. Sometimes brave looks more like staying when you want to leave, telling the truth when all you want to do is change the subject.” > “We love broad strokes, cross-country moves, kickstarter campaigns. But brave these days is a lot quieter, at least for me. Brave is staying put when I’m addicted to rushing, forgiving myself when I want that familiar frisson of shame that I’ve become so used to using as a motivator. Brave is listening instead of talking. Brave is articulating my feelings, especially when the feelings are sad or scared or fragile instead of confident or happy or light.” > “Sometimes being brave is being quiet. Being brave is getting off the drug of performance. For me, being brave is trusting that what my God is asking of me, what my family and community is asking from me, is totally different than what our culture says I should do. Sometimes, brave looks boring, and that’s totally, absolutely, okay.” - Being brave doesn’t look the same to me anymore. - Being brave looks smaller now. - And yet it is so much more profound. - It’s in the difficult conversations. - In the vulnerability of really being seen. - Of telling the truth when shame is holding you down. - That's what brave looks like. --- ### What makes our lives meaningful is not what we accomplish. > “It’s about learning to show up and let ourselves be seen just as we are, massively imperfect and weak and wild and flawed in a thousand ways, but still worth loving. It’s about realizing that what makes our lives meaningful is not what we accomplish, but how deeply and honestly we connect with the people in our lives, how wholly we give ourselves to the making of a better world, through kindness and courage.” > “In the silence, I have found love. I have found love, and peace, and stillness, and gratitude. I used to overwork in order to feel important. What I’m learning now is that feeling important to someone else isn’t valuable to me the way I thought it was. Feeling connected is very valuable. But feeling helpful to strangers doesn’t do it for me anymore.” - I’ve spent years trying to have more, do more, be more. - And yet that’s not where meaning lies. - Not any more. - Not for me. - Meaning is in the conversations with my boys on the school runs. - It’s in the gratitudes we share each evening at the dinner table. - It’s in the Sunday morning cuddles and cups of tea. - I have found meaning. - But it’s not in anything I accomplish. --- ### Sometimes the most beautiful things we do are invisible. > “We’re addicted to big and sweeping and photo-ready—crossing oceans, changing it all, starting new things, dreams and visions and challenges, marathons and flights and ascending tall peaks. But the rush to scramble up onto platforms, to cross oceans, to be heard and seen and known sometimes comes at a cost, and sometimes the most beautiful things we do are invisible, unsexy." > “It’s easier to be impressive to strangers than it is to be consistently kind behind the scenes. It’s easier to show up and be a hit for an hour than it is to get down on the floor with your kids when you’re so tired your eyes are screaming and bone-dry. It’s easier to be charming on a conference call than it is to traverse the distance between you and your spouse, the distance you created.” - Listening to fears, to achievements, to hopes and dreams. - Sharing jokes. - Making memories. - Small things. - Invisible things. - But when we stop, just for a moment, we see that they are always beautiful. --- ### Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find. > “Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find. If you’re looking for stories to affirm your deep belief in the goodness of humanity, you’ll find them. If you’re only seeking stories that say the world is nothing but evil, you’ll find them.“ Perception is everything. When I look for love I find it. When I seek opportunities they are there. When I let go of fear and choose to see the light, beauty is all around me. Life is better this way. --- ### I can do far less than I originally believed. And I’m revelling in the smallness of my capacity. > “I know that I am responsible for stewarding my own life, my desires and limitations, my capacities and longings. I can do far less than I originally believed. And I’m reveling in the smallness of my capacity. This is it. This is who I am. This is all I have to give you. It’s not a fire hose, unending gallons of water, knocking you over with force. It’s a stream: tiny, clear, cool. That’s what I have to give, and that small stream is mine to nurture, to tend, to offer first to the people I love most, my first honor and responsibility.” - I used to think I could do it all, be it all, have it all. - I can’t. - I hold my hands up. - I don’t have the capacity. - I’m ok with that. - I know my limits. - Life is smaller now. - Simple. - And I love it this way. --- ### Playing is not wasted time > “One of my new things (of which there are many these days—I feel sort of adolescent, changing and growing and trying new things faster than I can keep up with, in a good way) is playing. Playing: spending time lavishly, staring into space, wandering around the block, sitting on the kitchen floor eating blueberries with Mac." > "And so one of the tiny little things I’m learning to do is to play—essentially, to purposely waste time. Strategically avoid strategy, for”five minutes at a time. Intentionally not be intentional about every second. Have no purpose—on purpose. There are lots of conversations right now about how to do everything better/faster/smarter, how to streamline, multitask, layer, balance, flow, juggle. How to monetize, strategize, and on and on. This is good stuff. Necessary stuff. But my jam these days is wasting time, playing, becoming aware of that internal engine that always wants to go faster, faster, faster. That engine is not the best part of me. My heart is the best part of me." > “And I’m finding that my heart loves to play. My heart loves to color and draw, loves to dance in the kitchen, loves to shoot baskets, loves to do cartwheels with my nieces in the front yard. What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, nonstrategic, wild and beautiful five-minute breaks, reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not about the hustle?” - I used to think that anything that did not have a productive outcome was time wasted. - Oh how wrong I was. - And how much time I wasted over the years trying just to be productive. - Now I play, I potter, I take my time and I do things ‘just because’. - It fills my soul. --- ### I want less not more > “I want to clear away space and noise and things to do and things to manage. I want less of everything. Less stuff. Less rushing. Less proving and pushing. Less hustle. Less snapping at my kids so that they’ll get themselves into the car faster so we can go buy more stuff that we’re going to throw away. Less consumption. Less feeling like my mind is fragmented and my stomach is bloated and my life is out of control.” > “We were all raised to build, build, build. Bigger is better, more is better, faster is better. It had never occurred to us, in church-building or any other part of life, that someone would intentionally keep something small, or deliberately do something slow.” - Do more. - Have more. - Be more. - A recurring theme. - One that so many people strive for. - And yet it is in the space, in the smallness, in the silence that I find myself. - That I find what I have been missing all these years. --- ### If I keep showing up in the present, I will always find my way home. > Probably you will not always live in this new, brave, grounded space. Let me be clear with you: I don’t. I still get pushed off center, thrown into fear and proving, wound up into a tangled mess of expectations and opinions of who I should be and what I should do. But there’s good news, too: if we just keep coming back to the silence, if we keep grounding ourselves, as often as we need to, in God’s wild love, if we keep showing up and choosing to be present in both the mess and in the delight, we will find our way home, even if the road is winding, and full of fits and starts. We will find our way home." >"This is what I want to tell you: it’s better here, here in the place of love. This journey has brought about a meaningful transformation in every single part of my life. Every single part. My prayer life, my marriage, my family life, my friendships. I enjoy my work more. I feel a deep well of gratitude, a clean and grateful desire to live a life of meaning. I have the energy to live well, to dedicate myself to the things that matter to me, and that God has called me to. I have the security to truly rest, to truly enjoy this extraordinary world and all its offerings—books and art and meals and people and conversations and cities and beaches and night skies. And while I am deeply appreciative of the charms of this glittering world, I feel a sense of patience where I used to feel slight anxiety about the beauty of it: will I see it all? What if I miss something?" - I find that depression comes when I live in the past. - Anxiety comes when I live in the future. - But the present, this is where I find my way home. - Where I am safe. - Where I am loved. - Where I can breathe. --- ### Everything I need is within me > “My life is marked now by quiet, connection, simplicity. It has taken every bit of more than three years to learn these things, and like any hard, good work, I fail and try again more often than I’d prefer. But there is a peace that defines my days, a settledness, a groundedness. I’ve been searching for this in a million places, all outside myself, and it astounds me to realize that the groundedness is within me, and that maybe it was there all along.” - Why is it that when something is wrong we look outside ourselves for the answers. - But that’s not where the answers lie. - When uncertainty rises, we need to sink. - Beneath the noise and the chaos. - And there, in the silence, in our breathe the answers will come. - Everything we need is within us. - It's always within us. --- ### There’s room for good days and bad ones. > "Some of my obsession with perfection rears its head on this topic. I don’t often these days expect my body to be perfect. But I do sometimes demand my outlook about it to be perfectly evolved and positive. I’m not there yet. I’m going to both take up space and create space—for my body, and also for my sadness and my longing and my anger. There’s room here for good days and bad ones, for crying in dressing rooms and dancing in the kitchen. For sizing up my jeans . . . again, and for feeling something like beautiful when my husband captures a photo of me on the beach with our boys." > “I chose to be present over perfect, and that’s still what I choose today. Some days I do it better than others—it’s still a tremendous temptation for me to spin out into achievement or efficiency or performance instead of dwelling deeply in life as it presents itself each moment. Indeed, sometimes I can get a little obsessive about pursuing non-perfection just perfectly. But the endeavor itself is trans-formative: my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, and my connection to God have all been enriched in countless ways along this journey. This isn’t about working less or more, necessarily. This isn’t about homemade or takeout, or full time or part time, or the specific ways we choose to live out our days. It’s about rejecting the myth that every day is a new opportunity to prove our worth, and about the truth that our worth is inherent, given by God, not earned by our hustling.” - I’m letting go of needing every day to be perfect. - Of thinking that I need to be happy all the time. - Just as the weather changes, so too does everything else. - Feelings. - Thoughts. - Some good. - Some not so good. - There’s room for them all. - Trying to control them, trying to make them perfect, that’s when the problems arise. - So I choose to give them space. - To let them be. - To sit back and watch the clouds as they pass. - Because they will. --- ### Every new season of life is an invitation to leave behind the things of the season before. > “This is, I realize, middle age. But here’s the thing: every new season of life is an invitation to leave behind the things of the season before, the trappings and traps that have long expired, right for then, no longer right for now.” > “Whatever passage you’re facing—entering your twenties or your sixties, facing life alone for the first time in a long time or learning the new dance of partnership, becoming a parent or becoming an empty nester, leaving student life behind or becoming a student once again—has the potential to be your sea-change, your invitation to leave behind what’s not essential and travel deeply into the heart of things. This is a pattern we can recreate all our lives, over and over, because who’s ever totally finished leaving things behind?” - I love watching the seasons change. - In nature. In my menstrual cycle. - In my life. - No season is better or worse than any other. - They are different. - Each is essential. - And with each one, a chance to get rid of things that no longer serve us in this moment. --- ### What I ache for these days is space, silence, stillness. > “And beyond those things I’ve done, the more life-altering parts of the work are those things I’ve not done: the moments that I’ve allowed - or forced - myself to stop, to rest, to breathe, to connect. That’s where life is, I’m finding. That’s where grace is. That’s where delight is.” > “Do you know what it’s like to be rested? Truly rested? I didn’t, for about two decades. Do you know what it’s like to feel connected, in deep and lovely ways, to the people you love most? Do you know the sweetness of working hard and then stopping the working hard, realizing that your body and your spirit have carried you far enough and now they need to be tended to? I feel like a newborn in all this, blissful and delighted each time I take care of myself, like a new skill or a present.” > “I want the stuff in my life to be light, easily managed, simple, so that the best of my energy is free for people, dreams, creativity; so that we can make memories around the table, eating meals served on those white plates; so that I can run after my kids in one of a half-dozen striped shirts; so that when you want to borrow a book, each one on my shelf tells a meaningful story. How we live matters, and what you choose to own will shape your life, whether you choose to admit it or not. Let’s live lightly, freely, courageously, surrounded only by what brings joy, simplicity, and beauty.” - Right now my life is light. - There is space. - There is silence and stillness. - And the more I have of these things, the more I crave. - For it is in this simplicity that I find joy, connection and beauty. --- ### There is a way of living that is so sweet, so full, so whole and beautiful you’ll never want to go back once you’ve tasted it. > "In the space that used to be filled with a whirring ball of anxiety, now there is a new patience, a new settledness, a new desire to be just exactly where I am right now. I’m reveling in this new patience, this new groundedness, this new sense of peace. It’s so foreign, and it’s so lovely. The deep well of contentedness that I feel these days is nothing short of a miracle, and it’s one I am thankful for every single day." > “And in this season, this unabashedly midlife passage, I’m laying down my arms, opening my hands, to mix the metaphors thoroughly. I love the simplicity of this season: it’s noticeably quiet, and I’m surprised to find how much I like it. I’ve been terrified of silence all my life, and for the first time, I’m finding it beautiful.” > “This is what I’m finding, every day, every hour: there is a way of living that is so sweet, so full, so whole and beautiful you’ll never want to go back once you’ve tasted it.” - I’m content. - This life, this simple, small, quiet life fills my heart and my soul. - I feel grounded. - I feel whole. - And I am grateful for each and every day. --- ### the man in the tuxedo >“Margaret told us about a dear family friend dying of cancer. This is the very end—a month, maybe. Earlier that week, he asked Blaine to come over and record a video. When Blaine arrived, he was shocked to see that Robert was in a tuxedo. The video he wanted Blaine to capture was his toasts for his kids’ weddings. Because he won’t be there for his kids’ weddings. He had written his toasts word for word, and he spoke those words right into the camera, voice garbled by his sickness. He was, Margaret told us, using every remaining second, leaving nothing unsaid, giving love and words and stories and wisdom, spending the last moments he has with great intention.” >“I don’t know this man, the one who stood in his tuxedo, speaking to his children at some future wedding day. And his story is his, and it’s valuable on its own terms, nothing to do with me. And yet I do believe that if you’re asking for help, for guidance, you’ll receive it, and it might come in a different way than you expect.” - sometimes we cannot do anything about the hand we are given - but we get to choose how to react --- ### we need to rescue first > “I think of swimming with our boys, and how when one of them struggles, I don’t lecture. I don’t let them flounder a few extra seconds while I correct them sternly. I scoop them up, a hundred times an hour if necessary. I watch them, grab them, keep them close. When we’re safe again, when we’re close to shore, then we talk about deep water or clearing our ears when we dive down deep. But before all that, rescue. Rescue. Rescue. Even the word moves me. And then the question: why did you doubt? Not: what’s wrong with you? Not the frustrated and rhetorical, “Why on earth did you do that?” that a parent asks a child after he knocks something off a counter. But a question, an invitation into conversation, a way of saying, “I’m here and I care, and let’s solve this together.” [[Shauna Niequist]] --- ### midlife is about recovering an essential self, not discovering a new one >“I thought that my midlife season would be about pushing into a new future ... and it is. I thought it would be about leaving behind the expectations and encumbrances of the past. It is. What I didn’t know is that it would feel so much like recovering an essential self, not like discovering a new one. Hold close to your essential self. Get to know it, the way you get to know everything in the world about someone you’re in love with, the way you know your child, their every freckle and preference and which cry means what.” “You know what? Six months from now, I bet I’m going to look pretty much like this. How do I know? Because I’ve basically been this size since I was fourteen years old. I think my body is trying to tell me something, and essentially it’s this: Hey, crazy lady, this is what God gave you. And you’re sort of the last to know.” “And so at long last, I’m making peace with medium. And choosing to be happy. Rested, not exhausted, not afraid, not wired and panicky all the time. This is countercultural. This is rebellious. What I want so deeply, and what I want to offer you: grace and nourishment. And those are the exact opposites of what I’ve been practicing for so long: exhaustion and starvation.” "And I will be happy. Or actually, maybe not. Maybe I won’t be happy all of the time. Maybe when I’m sixty, instead of forty, I’ll be able to be happy with my size, with my flesh. But of course this is exactly the point: hospitality, not perfection. I’ll show hospitality even to the fact that I am sometimes unhappy with my body. Unhappiness, come right in, sit right down. We’ll sit together. You’ll stay until you tire of this, and go. I will practice hospitality to my very own body—you can rest, you can be nourished, you can be loved. And I’ll also practice hospitality to my complicated feelings about my body. Because they’re a part of me, too." “So that friend and I carry some things for one another. She knows some of the more painful, shameful parts of my story. I know some of hers. In our little tribe we carry depression and addiction. We carry parents who drink and kids who struggle. We carry abortions and divorces and drug-using loved ones - ones who used to use, who still do, who we’ve lost because of it. We carry eating disorders and suicide. One night, one friend whispers into the circle, “I don’t believe in God anymore.” And we carry that. Because that’s what friendship is. That’s what it does. This little tribe may look squeaky clean, maybe like the kind of people who have no problems, like the kind of people who’ve only ever been swimming in the shallow end. But no one only lives in the shallow end. Life upends us all, and there’s no sparkly exterior that can defend against disease and loss and cheating spouses. We carry depression and wounds and broken marriages. We carry addictions and diseases and scars and loss of faith. We carry it because that’s what love is. That’s what friendship is.” “At some point in the party, I’ll check in with another old friend - I’ve been carrying his family’s deception and betrayal and disease for decades. I’m honored to. And he carries the broken parts of my family’s story, and my failures and regrets. Because that’s what we do: we carry the mess together. Your mess is mine.” ### None > Stop. Right now. Remake your life from the inside out. ### None > In that moment, I had no idea what it meant to remake my life from the inside out ### None > I tried all the outside ways first—I imagined the changes I needed to make were about time management, or perhaps having the cleaners come more often. I quickly found it was not about managing time or housekeeping. It was not about to-do lists or scheduling or minutes and hours. This journey has been about love, about worth, about God, about what it means to know him and be loved by him in a way that grounds and reorders everything. ### None > It is work, of course. It feels, I’d imagine, like adding a basement to a house that’s already been standing for decades. I thought it would be more like adding new shutters, but I’m finding it to be more like lifting up a home and starting to dig, reorienting the very foundation. There is nothing superficial about this process. ### None > And beyond those things I’ve done, the more life-altering parts of the work are those things I’ve not done: the moments that I’ve allowed—or forced—myself to stop, to rest, to breathe, to connect. That’s where life is, I’m finding. That’s where grace is. That’s where delight is. ### None > I’m not, by any means, at the end of this journey. But I have traveled this beautiful new road far enough to know that this is how I want to live the rest of my days. I’m almost forty, feeling midlife-y like crazy, and this is how I want to live the second half of my life. ### None > My prayer is that this book will be a thousand invitations, springing up from every page, calling you to leave behind the heavy weight of comparison, competition, and exhaustion, and to recraft a life marked by meaning, connection, and unconditional love. ### None > Richard Rohr says the skills that take you through the first half of your life are entirely unhelpful for the second half. To press the point a little bit: those skills I developed that supposedly served me well for the first half, as I inspect them a little more closely, didn’t actually serve me at all. ### None > My life is marked now by quiet, connection, simplicity. It has taken every bit of more than three years to learn these things, and like any hard, good work, I fail and try again more often than I’d prefer. But there is a peace that defines my days, a settledness, a groundedness. I’ve been searching for this in a million places, all outside myself, and it astounds me to realize that the groundedness is within me, and that maybe it was there all along. ### None > I’ve always trusted things outside myself, believing that my own voice couldn’t be trusted, that my own preferences and desires would lead me astray, that it was far wiser and safer to listen to other people—other voices, the voices of the crowd. I believed it was better to measure my life by metrics out there, instead of values deeply held in my own soul and spirit. ### None > Maybe these things go in cycles. Someone told me recently that we experience a fundamental change every seven years ### None > This is what I know: I’ve always been a more is more person, and something shifted this summer. Something inside me said no more. ### None > One friend said that a way to get at your desire or dream is to answer this question: if someone gave you a completely blank calendar and a bank account as full as you wanted, what would you do? The first thing that leapt into my mind: stop. I would stop. I would rest. I would do nothing at all. I would sleep. The thought of it almost made me weep. ### None > What if I trusted that there would be more time down the road, that if that book has to be read or that party has to be thrown or that race has to be run or that trip has to be taken, there will be time to take it/do it/read it/write it later? Later. Later. > I don’t operate in later. I’ve always been proud of that. But look where it’s gotten me. Stuffed. Exhausted. Wrung out and over-scheduled to the point where even things I love to do sound like obligations, and all my deepest desires and fantasies involve sleep and being left alone. My greatest dream is to be left alone? Things have gone terribly awry. ### None > What I ache for these days is space, silence, stillness. Sabbath. I want to clear away space and noise and things to do and things to manage. I want less of everything. Less stuff. Less rushing. Less proving and pushing. Less hustle. Less snapping at my kids so that they’ll get themselves into the car faster so we can go buy more stuff that we’re going to throw away. Less consumption. Less feeling like my mind is fragmented and my stomach is bloated and my life is out of control. ### None > I never know I need quiet and stillness until it’s too late, till the lack of stillness scrapes me raw - [n] Tonsillitis? ### None > And I was furious. Furious at whom, I don’t know, because you can’t help being sick. But what I felt was trapped and angry. I didn’t want to wipe another nose, fold another little set of pajamas, measure out another dose of Tylenol. I wanted to leave. > Three sick boys, dependent on me, feels a little too much like the rest of life ### None > Henry was sick this weekend, and then just as soon as he was on the upswing, Aaron got sick, and then Monday morning, when I so desperately needed everyone to be better, all three woke up sick ### None > This is what I call fake-resting. I’m wearing pajamas. The kids are watching cartoons, snuggling under blankets, eating waffles. Aaron’s reading or sleeping. It looks like I’m resting, too. But I’m not. I’m ticking down an endless list, sometimes written, always mental, getting things back into their right spots, changing the laundry, wiping down the countertops. > Some might say this is being a mother, or a homemaker, or this is what women have been doing for generations: tending to the home stuff while men and children go about their leisure. Maybe so, but this woman and mom is exhausted. And tired of being exhausted. ### None > I fake-rested instead of real-rested, and then I found that I was real-tired. It feels ludicrous to be a grown woman, a mother, still learning how to rest. But here I am, baby-stepping to learn something kids know intuitively. ### None > Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for resting your body and your soul. And part of being an adult is learning to meet your own needs, because when it comes down to it, with a few exceptions, no one else is going to do it for you. ### None > I knew that I needed to work less. That’s absolutely true. That’s the first step. But it’s trickier than that: the internal voice that tells me to hustle can find a to-do list in my living room as easily as it can in an office. It’s not about paid employment. It’s about trusting that the hustle will never make you feel the way you want to feel. In that way, it’s a drug, and I fall for the initial rush every time: if I push enough, I will feel whole. I will feel proud, I will feel happy. What I feel, though, is exhausted and resentful, but with well-organized closets. ### None > Who told me that keeping everything organized would deliver happiness? What a weird prescription for happiness. Why do I think managing our possessions is a meaningful way of spending my time? Why do I think clean countertops means anything at all - [n] Organising files on Evernote Studying more Completing unfinished (meaningless) tasks ### None > And I know that activity—any activity—keeps me from feeling, so that becomes a drug, too. I’ll run circles around this house, folding clothes and closing cabinets, sweeping and tending to things, never allowing myself to feel the cavernous ache. > Which brings us, literally, to the heart of the conversation: the heart, the cavernous ache. Am I loved? Does someone see me? Do I matter? Am I safe? - [n] Am I enough? Have I done enough? Am I clever enough? ### None > I learned a long time ago that if I hustle fast enough, the emptiness will never catch up with me. - [n] I’m not lazy? I’m not just sitting doing nothing Maybe goes back to dad and mum growing up? Where he would accuse her of doing nothing all day ### None > You can make a drug—a way to anesthetize yourself—out of anything: working out, binge-watching TV, working, having sex, shopping, volunteering, cleaning, dieting. Any of those things can keep you from feeling pain for a while—that’s what drugs do. And, used like a drug, over time, shopping or TV or work or whatever will make you less and less able to connect to the things that matter, like your own heart and the people you love. That’s another thing drugs do: they isolate you. ### None > Most of us have a handful of these drugs, and it’s terrifying to think of living without them. It is terrifying: wildly unprotected, vulnerable, staring our wounds right in the face. But this is where we grow, where we learn, where our lives actually begin to change. - [n] My drugs... Binge-watching tv Studying Food Organising my files Reading ? Checking phone - emails / Social media ### None > Busyness is an illness of the spirit. > —Eugene Peterson ### None > I’ve been working all my life. Work has been a through line, one that I’m very thankful for, one that has taught me so much about the benefits of structure, discipline, skill, communication, and responsibility. > But at some point, good clean work became something else: an impossible standard to meet, a frantic way of living, a practice of ignoring my body and my spirit in order to prove myself as the hardest of hard workers. > As I unravel the many things that brought me to this crisis point, one is undeniably my own belief that hard work can solve anything, that pushing through is always the right thing, that rest and slowness are for weak people, not for high-capacity people like me. > Oh, the things I did to my body and my spirit in order to maintain my reputation as a high-capacity person. Oh, the moments I missed with people I love because I was so very committed to being known as the strongest of the strong. Oh, the quiet moments alone with God I sacrificed in order to cross a few things off the to-do list I worshiped. ### None > Productivity became my idol, the thing I loved and valued above all else. We all have these complicated tangles of belief and identity and narrative, and one of the early stories I told about myself is that my ability to get-it-done is what kept me around. I wasn’t beautiful. I didn’t have a special or delicate skill. But I could get stuff done, and it seemed to me that ability was my entrance into the rooms into which I wanted to be invited. ### None > The world that made sense to me was a world of earning and proving, and I was gutting it out just like everyone around me, frantically trying to prove my worth. ### None > When you devote yourself to being known as the most responsible person anyone knows, more and more people call on you to be that highly responsible person. That’s how it works. So the armload of things I was carrying became higher and higher, heavier and heavier, more and more precarious. > At the same time, I was more and more aware that I was miserable. Not all the time, of course, but sometimes, in those rare moments when I let myself really feel honestly instead of filling in the right answers, I realized with great surprise that this way of living was not making me happy at all. ### None > There we were, women in our thirties. Educated, married, mothers, women who have careers, who manage homes and oversee companies. And there we were, utterly resigned to lives that feel overly busy and pressurized, disconnected and exhausted. > But that’s shifting the blame, right? Who’s the boss, if not us? Who’s forcing us to live this way? Or, possibly, do we not want to face the answer to that question, preferring to believe we can’t possibly be held responsible for what we’ve done? ### None > We were all raised to build, build, build. Bigger is better, more is better, faster is better. It had never occurred to us, in church-building or any other part of life, that someone would intentionally keep something small, or deliberately do something slow. ### None > it can be hard to grasp the idea that we have some say over the size of our own lives—that we have the agency and authority and freedom to make them smaller or larger, heavier or lighter. ### None > Aaron and I asked Henry about what he wants for our family in the next year. More adventures? More trips? Does he want to play soccer again? Does he want to start piano, or move to a different town, or get bunk beds? > “More this,” he said. “More time all together like this. And at home. I like it when we’re all together at home.” Aaron and I looked at one another over his head, letting the other know that we heard it, too, that we were paying attention. ### None > Being good at something feels great. Playing ninja turtles with two little boys for hours on end is sometimes less great. It’s so easy to hop on a plane or say yes to one more meeting or project, to get that little buzz of being good at something, or the pleasure bump of making someone happy, or whatever it is that drives you. > And many of us continue to pretend we don’t have a choice—the success just happened, and we’re along for the ride. The opportunities kept coming, and anyone in our position would have jumped to meet them. > But we’re the ones who keep putting up the chairs. > If I work in such a way that I don’t have enough energy to give to my marriage, I need to take down some chairs. If I say yes to so many work things that my kids only get to see tired mommy, I need to take down some chairs. ### None > We have more authority, and therefore, more responsibility than we think. We decide where the time goes. There’s so much freedom in that, and so much responsibility. > That old question: But what are you going to do? > I’m going to take down some chairs. ### None > The word that changed everything, of course, is no. I’d been saying yes and yes and yes, indiscriminately, haphazardly, resentfully for years. And I realized all at once that I’d spent all my yeses, and in order to find peace and health in my life, I needed to learn to say no. ### None > no won’t always be the word you use most often. I hate that for a season, no had to be the answer to almost everything. But over time, when you rebuild a life that’s the right size and dimension and weight, full of the things you’re called to, emptied of the rest, then you do get to live some yes again. But for a while, no is what gets you there. ### None > For so many years, I was deeply invested in people knowing that I was a very competent, capable, responsible person. I needed them to know that about me, because if that was true about me, I believed, I would be safe and happy. If I was responsible and hardworking, I would be safe and happy. > Fast forward to a deeply exhausted and resentful woman, disconnected from her best friends, trying so darned hard to keep being responsible, but all at once, unable. Something snapped, and my anger outweighed my precious competence. Something fundamental had to change. ### None > To be sure, finding your purpose can take a long time to figure out, and along the way it is tempting to opt instead for the immediate gratification, the immediate fix, of someone’s approval. But the sweet rush of approval, the pat on the head, can often derail us from real love, and real purpose. ### None > Along this passage, my life has become decidedly less impressive. It has, though, become so much more joyful, here on the inside, here where it matters only to me and to the people closest to me. There’s less to see—fewer books being published, fewer events being spoken at, fewer trips, fewer blog posts, fewer parties. And the space that remains is beautiful and peaceful and full of life and connection, what I was looking for all along with all that pushing and proving. ### None > I tried, on and off for the first years of this journey, to inch my way toward sanity and peace. And every fall I fell apart again, having said yes to too many things. I needed more than just a vague intention to slow down a little bit. For some of us, the addiction to motion is so deep, so pervasive, that only dramatic gestures are enough to take hold. ### None > It was slow, and it was simple, and it was sweeter than I can remember, because it felt more like a glass of water than a firehose. Pride, for years, has told me that I am strong enough to drink from a firehose, and gluttony tells me it will all be so delicious. > But those voices are liars. The glass of cool water is more lovely and sustaining than the firehose will ever be, and I’m starting to trust the voices of peace and simplicity more than pride and gluttony. They’re leading me well these days. > The more I listen to myself, my body, my feelings, and the less I listen to the “should” and “must” and “to-do” voices, the more I realize my body and spirit have been whispering all along, but I couldn’t hear them over the chaos and noise of the life I’d created. I was addicted to this chaos, but like any addiction, it was damaging to me. ### None > I thought the doing and the busyness would keep me safe. They keep me numb. Which is not the same as safe, which isn’t even the greatest thing to aspire to. ### None > But this is what I’ve learned the hard way: what people think about you means nothing in comparison to what you believe about yourself. ### None > I’m not a potter or a dancer—my mind is my only tool, and at the same time, it’s my greatest challenge, an overeager puppy, a spinning hamster wheel. > In the last few years, there has been, in some moments, a thread of inner violence inside me. In some moments, I feel such profound self-hatred, and that terrible darkness bleeds out onto everyone around me, the way darkness does. ### None > I knew, even while it was happening, that this was one of those moments that a mother keeps with her forever, a snapshot of impossible sweetness. I told myself to remember absolutely every single thing about it, to stay in it and soak up every second. ### None > And at the very same time, I felt a dagger of such aggressive hatred for myself that I couldn’t concentrate. I’ve been snorkeling since I was a child, but I kept submerging the snorkel, sucking in salty water, sputtering and gasping. I kept shaking my head, trying to snap myself back into the present, into the wonder, into the beauty, but I couldn’t. The wave of deep darkness inside me was too powerful to beat back, and while I fought to be there, fully there, I was swept away by a searing-hot knife slice of self-hatred running through me. > All I could think about was how deeply I hated myself. I was holding my son’s hand as he led me through the water, snorkeling at one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. And I was choking on my aggressive, almost violent self-loathing. > Something unlocked. When Henry and I got back to the shore, over the kids’ heads, I said softly to Aaron, “Something needs to change. I can’t live like this anymore. We can’t. They can’t.” > He squeezed my hand. “We’re on it, baby, whatever it takes.” ### None > And so I began to peer into the darkness, that plunging sense of deep inadequacy. It’s always been there. Frankly, I didn’t know other people didn’t have it. I thought that at the center of all of us was black liquid self-loathing, and that’s why we did everything we did—that’s why some people become workaholics and some people eat and some people drink and some people have sex with strangers. To avoid that dark sludge of self-loathing at the center of all of us. ### None > I can’t hear the voice of love when I’m hustling. All I can hear are my own feet pounding the pavement, and the sound of other runners about to overtake me, beat me. But competition has no place in my life anymore. The stillness reminds me of that. > The longer I practiced this new way of praying, of listening, of dwelling deeply in God’s love, the more I began to feel truly present, instead of being hijacked a thousand times a day by my wild mind. I feel all here, collected together in a wide-eyed and able way. Simple presence. Wholeheartedness. Patience. Lack of paralyzing fear. > I feel, frankly, like the kind of mom and wife and friend I’ve wanted to be for a long time. Most of my regrets center around getting overwhelmed or stuck in my own head, worried and catastrophizing, endless loops of proving and shame, pushing and exhaustion. ### None > Here I am, God: I feel scared and fragile, and I worry about my kids. When I’m away from them, I miss them, but when I’m with them sometimes I feel so impatient with them. I don’t like who I am sometimes, and I wonder if anyone really loves me. ### None > I’m learning so much through the silence, and the space created in its absence. My crazy brain has always been my gift and my challenge, and I’ve tried everything to lower the volume in my head, because things really do get a little loud in there. > What I’m finding, though, is that it’s my job to lower the volume just enough so my ears don’t bleed, and so that I can hear the music of my life. > I’m an avoider, an escaper, an anywhere-but-here with all my thoughts and feelings kind of person. While I want so deeply and desperately to live right in the actual-messy-gritty-fabulous-ridiculous present, I’ve got a whole arsenal of tricks to eject me out of it. My earliest escape route: stories. Then food. Drinking. Then working. Then achieving. All the things we hold out as armor, insulating us from the pain and mess and fear. ### None > But the pain and the mess and the fear are the fabric of actual life, woven amid love and parenting and bedtime and laundry and work. When you insulate yourself from some of it, you insulate yourself from all of it. And I want to be right in it, painful or not, scary or not. As my friend Glennon says: unarmed. > I’ve been armed for as long as I can remember, a veritable bunker of books and meals and drinks and to-do lists—they looked like real life, but upon closer inspection they were my armor against it. ### None > And in this season, this unabashedly midlife passage, I’m laying down my arms, opening my hands, to mix the metaphors thoroughly. I love the simplicity of this season: it’s noticeably quiet, and I’m surprised to find how much I like it. > I’ve been terrified of silence all my life, and for the first time, I’m finding it beautiful. ### None > Whatever thing you think you can’t do without: alcohol, shopping, that number on a scale. That car, that secret habit, that workout. The pills, the lies, the affair. The money, the success, the cutting. Whatever it is that you clutch onto with angry fists, that you grab like a lifeline, when you release that thing, when you let it go, that’s when you’ll hear the notes between the music. That’s when you’ll feel the groove, the rhythm you were made to feel, that you’ve covered over a thousand times with noise and motion and fear and all the things. ### None > The Journey - [n] One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life that you could save. ### None > You wander from room to room > Hunting for the diamond necklace > That is already around your neck. > —Rumi ### None > Essentially, what I’m talking about, what I’m circling ever nearer and nearer to is agency. Or maybe authority: owning one’s life, for better and for worse, saying out loud, “This is who I am, this is who I’m not, this is what I want, this is what I’m leaving behind.” ### None > What I’m learning is that you have to stop doing a whole lot of things to learn what it is you really love, who it is you really are. Many of us go years and years without even asking these questions, because the lives we’ve fallen into have told us exactly who to be and what to love and what to give ourselves to. ### None > As I look back, in many instances, I simply followed the natural course of things. And great things happened, mostly. But over time I realized they weren’t necessarily great things for me ### None > Some of us are made to be faster, and some slower, some of us louder, and some quieter. Some of us are made to build things and nurture things. Some of us are made to write songs and grants and novels, all different things. And I’m finding that one of the greatest delights in life is walking away from what someone told you you should be in favor of walking toward what you truly love, in your own heart, in your own secret soul. ### None > But what I’ve learned the hard way is you don’t answer to a wide swath of people and their opinions, even if they’re good people, with good opinions. You were made by hand with great love by the God of the universe, and he planted deep inside of you a set of loves and dreams and idiosyncrasies, and you can ignore them as long as you want, but they will at some point start yelling. Worse than that, if you ignore them long enough, they will go silent, and that’s the real tragedy. > What’s changing everything for me is a new understanding that we get to decide how we want to live. We get to shape our days and our weeks, and if we don’t, they’ll get shaped by the wide catch-all of “normal” and “typical,” and who wants that? ### None > You get to make your life. In fact, you have to. And not only can you make it, you can remake it. ### None > This life you’re building is entirely your creation, fashioned out of your dreams and fears. What do you want? What do you love? What ways of living have you simply acquiesced to, because someone told you to? Because it seemed smart or practical or easy? Are those the best words to describe how you want to live? > If I’m honest, I let words like responsible and capable govern many of my years. And what good are they? Words that I’m choosing in this season: passion, connection, meaning, love, grace, spirit. > The world will tell you how to live, if you let it. Don’t let it. Take up your space. Raise your voice. Sing your song. This is your chance to make or remake a life that thrills you. ### None > These last months have required more silence than any other season in my life. I’ve both craved it and avoided it, in equal turns, and finally realized that the craving is something to listen to, something to obey. > These days I’m pursuing regular intervals of silence and solitude. It’s almost like training wheels, or like a cast. I’m so unfamiliar with listening deeply to my own life and desires that I can only do it in the context and confines of silence—I lose track of my own voice in a crowd very easily. ### None > with the cameras rolling and the room full of talented, kind people I’d never met, I looked up at my friend and began to cry. > “I don’t want to miss the actual fabric of the interior of my life and the beautiful children growing up right this second in my own home because I’m working to please people somewhere out there. I’m afraid I’m missing it. I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong, and I want to know that I can change.” ### None > “The legacy I care most about is the one I’m creating with the people who know me best—my children, my husband, my best friends. And I have to make a change.” ### None > That idea, though, of the legacy I’m leaving is rattling around in my brain and my heart. I’ve preferred to believe that I can be all things to all people, but when I’m honest about my life, in the past couple years I’ve been better from a distance than I have been in my own home—I’ve given more to strangers and publishers and people who stand in line after events than I have to my neighbors, my friends. I come home weary and self-protective, pulled into a shell of exhaustion and depleted emotions. > This is, to be clear, not the legacy I want to leave. ### None > This is a common story, isn’t it? The pastor loves to solve other people’s problems, but doesn’t come home with enough energy in the tank for his family’s everyday problems. The writer becomes addicted to the IV drip of blog comments and likes, while her family longs for her to close the laptop and look them in the eye. It’s easy to be more charming in a sales meeting than at witching hour, and it’s nice to feel competent at something when family life feels difficult at best. By “nice,” I mean addictive. ### None > So many of us have taken those steps, if we’re honest, because we don’t know how to fix the problems we’ve created, because we never learned the set of skills we needed to navigate such difficult intimacy. We dive into information or work or bicycling or whatever, because it feels good to be good at something, to master something, to control something when marriage and intimacy often feel profoundly out of our control. And so, little by little, we tiptoe away. And before we know it, there’s a cavern between us, easily filled by someone simpler, better suited to us, someone, honestly, who hasn’t had to put up with us for quite so long, someone who still laughs at our jokes. ### None > What an easy escape, into people who think you’re great and work that makes you feel valuable. I can master my laptop in a way that I cannot master parenting. I can control my publishing schedule and my deadlines in a way that I cannot control our marriage. ### None > it sounded so familiar to me—like the story I’d heard from so many dear friends in the last couple years. I don’t know if it’s a mid-thirties thing, or a married-more-than-a-dozen-years thing, but it’s happening all around us. And when you look at the story in reverse, you see a thousand little choices that yielded the wreckage ### None > And these are the words I heard coming out of my own mouth: “Everybody else likes me better than you three do.” > That’s what you call a wake-up call. That’s a change-your-life, start-right-now moment. And so we did. Because I was on the path that man on the ferry was on. It’s easy to be liked by strangers. It’s very hard to be loved and connected to the people in your home when you’re always bringing them your most exhausted self and resenting the fact that the scraps you’re giving them aren’t cutting it. ### None > And many of us are too exhausted from the work we love to get down on the floor with our toddlers, or stay in the second hour of a difficult conversation with our spouses. > It seems to me that one of the great hazards is quick love, which is actually charm. We get used to smiling, hugging, bantering, practicing good eye contact. And it’s easier than true, slow, awkward, painful connection with someone who sees all the worst parts of you. Your act is easy. Being with you, deeply with, is difficult. ### None > It is better to be loved than admired. It is better to be truly known and seen and taken care of by a small tribe than adored by strangers who think they know you in a meaningful way. We know that’s true. But many of us, functionally, have gotten that math wrong in one season or another. ### None > And if you can wean yourself off the drug of quick charm, off the drug of being good at something, losing yourself in something, the drug of work or money or information or marathon training—whatever it is you do to avoid the scary intimacy required for a rich home life—that’s when love can begin. But only then. It’s all in here, not out there. ### None > What should have delighted me instead made me afraid. And I know that should is one of my warning signs—that frequently I pay more attention to how I should feel about something than how I actually do feel about it. ### None > I asked for more time, and in the next three days, I went back and forth a dozen times. Of course I can. If I can, then I have to. They need me. They need me to be responsible, and tough. I should. Warning, warning, warning. The words tough, responsible, and should have never led me to life and wholeness. ### None > I wanted their advice—I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I’d always been doing, what I’d been trained to do. I knew what the right thing was ideologically, but I’m a good soldier, and I wanted this team to know that. > And then Margaret told us about a dear family friend dying of cancer. This is the very end—a month, maybe. Earlier that week, he asked Blaine to come over and record a video. > When Blaine arrived, he was shocked to see that Robert was in a tuxedo. The video he wanted Blaine to capture was his toasts for his kids’ weddings. Because he won’t be there for his kids’ weddings. He had written his toasts word for word, and he spoke those words right into the camera, voice garbled by his sickness. He was, Margaret told us, using every remaining second, leaving nothing unsaid, giving love and words and stories and wisdom, spending the last moments he has with great intention. ### None > They turned to me. You said you needed advice? they asked. No, I said. I did, but now I know. I don’t know this man, the one who stood in his tuxedo, speaking to his children at some future wedding day. And his story is his, and it’s valuable on its own terms, nothing to do with me. And yet I do believe that if you’re asking for help, for guidance, you’ll receive it, and it might come in a different way than you expect. > I needed to know who should get the best of my energy: my boys or a company that asked me to speak for them. I needed to know what matters. And the image of that man in his tuxedo was all I needed. You will always regret something. You will always disappoint someone. But it isn’t going to be my husband and our boys. It has been, sometimes. But I’m learning. And I’m making things right. ### None > I sent the email—afraid I’d be seen as weak or irresponsible, afraid that by saying no to this opportunity, I’d be pulling the ripcord on a career I’d spent a decade building, praying for opportunities like this one. At the same time, though, I knew that this was a clear shot at a new future. That saying yes to this would be continuing a way of living, a set of patterns that I’ve been trying to leave behind for a long time. It became enormous in my mind: can I change, or can’t I? Do I mean all the things I’ve been saying about worth and rest and what matters most, or don’t I? ### None > Look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve built. You’ve built a marriage, a home, a family. You’ve stayed with it, even when it was hard; you’re patient with the kids even when that’s hard. I think that’s brave.” ### None > He looked at me evenly while he spoke. “Sailing around the world isn’t necessarily brave. Leaving real life for two years isn’t necessarily brave. What you’re doing—what you’re building—I think that’s brave.” ### None > He was right, I realized. Brave doesn’t always involve grand gestures. > Sometimes brave looks more like staying when you want to leave, telling the truth when all you want to do is change the subject ### None > We’re addicted to big and sweeping and photo-ready—crossing oceans, changing it all, starting new things, dreams and visions and challenges, marathons and flights and ascending tall peaks. > But the rush to scramble up onto platforms, to cross oceans, to be heard and seen and known sometimes comes at a cost, and sometimes the most beautiful things we do are invisible, unsexy. > We love broad strokes, cross-country moves, kickstarter campaigns. But brave these days is a lot quieter, at least for me. Brave is staying put when I’m addicted to rushing, forgiving myself when I want that familiar frisson of shame that I’ve become so used to using as a motivator. Brave is listening instead of talking. Brave is articulating my feelings, especially when the feelings are sad or scared or fragile instead of confident or happy or light. ### None > It’s easier to be impressive to strangers than it is to be consistently kind behind the scenes. It’s easier to show up and be a hit for an hour than it is to get down on the floor with your kids when you’re so tired your eyes are screaming and bone-dry. It’s easier to be charming on a conference call than it is to traverse the distance between you and your spouse, the distance you created. > Sometimes being brave is being quiet. Being brave is getting off the drug of performance. For me, being brave is trusting that what my God is asking of me, what my family and community is asking from me, is totally different than what our culture says I should do. > Sometimes, brave looks boring, and that’s totally, absolutely, okay. ### None > And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. > —John Steinbeck ### None > I chose to be present over perfect, and that’s still what I choose today. Some days I do it better than others—it’s still a tremendous temptation for me to spin out into achievement or efficiency or performance instead of dwelling deeply in life as it presents itself each moment. Indeed, sometimes I can get a little obsessive about pursuing non-perfection just perfectly. But the endeavor itself is trans-formative: my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, and my connection to God have all been enriched in countless ways along this journey. > This isn’t about working less or more, necessarily. This isn’t about homemade or takeout, or full time or part time, or the specific ways we choose to live out our days. It’s about rejecting the myth that every day is a new opportunity to prove our worth, and about the truth that our worth is inherent, given by God, not earned by our hustling. ### None > It’s about learning to show up and let ourselves be seen just as we are, massively imperfect and weak and wild and flawed in a thousand ways, but still worth loving. It’s about realizing that what makes our lives meaningful is not what we accomplish, but how deeply and honestly we connect with the people in our lives, how wholly we give ourselves to the making of a better world, through kindness and courage. ### None > The shame glasses I wear almost all the time mean that every story looks like shame to me. Every punchline, every plot twist—they’re all the same: you’re not good enough. What I’m discovering, though, is when I take off the glasses, the stories I’ve been hearing all my life are completely different than I thought ### None > Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find. If you’re looking for stories to affirm your deep belief in the goodness of humanity, you’ll find them. If you’re only seeking stories that say the world is nothing but evil, you’ll find them. And if every story you hear, every song you sing, every tale you tell is really a story about shame and about not being good enough, you’ll find it. > I know this because I’ve been doing it for years. For me, when someone says, “I can’t come to your house,” I hear, “You’re not good enough.” When someone says, “That woman over there is so pretty,” I hear, “You’re not good enough.” When someone opens his or her mouth to say almost anything at all, what I hear is “you’re not good enough.” ### None > In the silence, I have found love. I have found love, and peace, and stillness, and gratitude. I used to overwork in order to feel important. What I’m learning now is that feeling important to someone else isn’t valuable to me the way I thought it was. Feeling connected is very valuable. But feeling helpful to strangers doesn’t do it for me anymore. ### None > As I’ve stripped things out of my life—constant traveling, overworking, compulsive activity—I’m finding that my senses are attuned so much more deeply than they’ve been in years. Music is reaching me with a depth I can’t remember since my adolescence, and poetry and nature, too. > I thought that my midlife season would be about pushing into a new future ... and it is. I thought it would be about leaving behind the expectations and encumbrances of the past. It is. What I didn’t know is that it would feel so much like recovering an essential self, not like discovering a new one. > Hold close to your essential self. Get to know it, the way you get to know everything in the world about someone you’re in love with, the way you know your child, their every freckle and preference and which cry means what ### None > Addiction to motion—or faking or busyness or obsessive eating or obsessive dieting or whatever it is for you—builds just a tiny, luscious buffer between you and . . . everything. So words that would hurt you when you’re stone-sober just don’t bother you after a glass or two of wine, or after you’ve lost three more pounds, or as long as chocolate or pizza can keep you company, keeping you safe and distant. But you take away those things and all of a sudden, you find many of your relationships very different than you originally believed. You feel everything. Everything. ### None > It seems to me like most of us were taught that jealousy is bad, and so when we feel it, we should push it away from ourselves as quickly as possible, get rid of it fast. But I’m learning that envy can be an extremely useful tool to demonstrate our desires, especially the ones we haven’t yet allowed ourselves to feel, and so I committed to learning from my jealousy toward her. I circled it, picked it up, turned it in my hand like a prism. What are you? I asked. What do you have to teach me? ### None > And in my most ground-down moments, I looked over at my friend’s life and I saw that she was . . . playing. Sheesh. Connecting. Please. Resting. Come on. Asking for help. What a baby. > That’s how it starts, at least for me. With disdain. A lot of “sheesh”-ing. Because if I can discount her, then I don’t have to grapple with my own feelings about her life compared to mine. But I’ve been down this road enough to know how well it can instruct me if I let it. And so I cracked down through the disdain to see what was underneath, and I wasn’t surprised, at this point, to find pure envy. ### None > When I allowed myself to tiptoe past the disdain, past the envy, what I found was longing. I was longing for a life that felt light, right-sized for my strengths and limitations. This was never about her. This was about me. > So I set to work on making my life look more like my longings, and along that path, I found my jealousy dissipating. ### None > My disdain and jealousy brought me to change my life, because I know that sometimes the darkest parts of us can be our teachers in ways that our sweeter qualities never could. > What makes you say, “Must be nice”? What longing might your jealousy lead you to, if you’re brave enough to listen to it before you push it away? ### None > At some point in the party, I’ll check in with another old friend—I’ve been carrying his family’s deception and betrayal and disease for decades. I’m honored to. And he carries the broken parts of my family’s story, and my failures and regrets. Because that’s what we do: we carry the mess together. Your mess is mine. ### None > So that friend and I carry some things for one another. She knows some of the more painful, shameful parts of my story. I know some of hers. In our little tribe we carry depression and addiction. We carry parents who drink and kids who struggle. We carry abortions and divorces and drug-using loved ones—ones who used to use, who still do, who we’ve lost because of it. We carry eating disorders and suicide. One night, one friend whispers into the circle, “I don’t believe in God anymore.” And we carry that. > Because that’s what friendship is. That’s what it does. > This little tribe may look squeaky clean, maybe like the kind of people who have no problems, like the kind of people who’ve only ever been swimming in the shallow end. But no one only lives in the shallow end. Life upends us all, and there’s no sparkly exterior that can defend against disease and loss and cheating spouses. We carry depression and wounds and broken marriages. We carry addictions and diseases and scars and loss of faith. We carry it because that’s what love is. That’s what friendship is. ### None > I thought that the speed—that frantic, anxious, powerful freight train—was outside of me, and that I needed to distance myself from it. That was partly true. But truer is that it’s also inside me—the roar of pressure and pushing and relentless motion. I’ve always been outrunning something, from my earliest memories, escaping into something, a story or a city or a meal or an experience. Frantic, frenetic, a hummingbird, a bouncing ball. > The journey of these years have been toward quiet—toward creating quiet around me, but more than that, toward creating quiet within me, which is much more difficult, and much more profound. ### None > I’m beginning to learn a new, slower speed, and I can feel my heartbeat elevate in a stressful way when I feel that old speed kicking up. I can do it. I’ll always be able to do it, I suppose. But I don’t want to anymore. The part of me that craved that breakneck way of living is also the part of me that was scared, that wanted to hide, that was always outrunning. > I’m learning to silence the noise, around me and within me, and let myself be seen and loved, not for what I produce, but for the fact that I have been created by the hands of a holy God, like every other thing on this earth, equally loved, equally seen. > It seems to me that some people got the hang of this early in life, that they’re just deeply fine and don’t have to push or prove or earn or outrun. These people, I’m finding, are unicorns—rare and lucky. Most of us are trying to fill a wound, trying to outrun something, turning up the volume to drown out a song that’s been haunting us all our lives. ### None > You don’t have to sacrifice your spirit, your joy, your soul, your family, your marriage on the altar of ministry. > Just because you have the capacity to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Management, organization, speaking and traveling: you must ask not only what fruit they bring to the world, but what fruit they yield on the inside of your life and your heart. ### None > First, we focus so often on the fruit for other people—it worked, people liked it, people gave me great feedback, and on and on. > I’ve spent all my life surrounded by pastors and their families, and I have seen a thousand examples of fruit in their churches and starvation in their marriages and families. I would not call that blessed, or whole, or healthy, or God’s intent. > Our family is not perfect, but I grew up with a dad who communicated to me in no uncertain terms that our family life mattered immensely, that I mattered to him, that the time we spent together was sacred time. I can’t thank him enough for that. ### None > When we speak of regrets, this is my greatest one: that I allowed other people’s visions for my career and calling take me away from what I know in my heart was the best, most whole way to live. It’s an honor to be invited into those churches and conferences and colleges and bookstores, and I said yes and yes and yes, because I wanted to help, because I was honored to be asked, because ### None > I knew better than to let our family suffer. My regret, though, and it is sizable and tender, is that I let myself suffer and deteriorate, body and soul, and it’s naïve to think that didn’t have profoundly negative effects on my children and my husband. I know it did. I cared for all three of them the best I could, but the person I was dragging back to our home, week after week, was a poor substitute for the wife and mother I wanted to be. > I was not well, but I was very, very productive. And it didn’t occur to me to stop. ### None > When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don’t get the pen back. Not easily anyway. ### None > I know that I am responsible for stewarding my own life, my desires and limitations, my capacities and longings. I can do far less than I originally believed. > And I’m reveling in the smallness of my capacity. This is it. This is who I am. This is all I have to give you. It’s not a fire hose, unending gallons of water, knocking you over with force. It’s a stream: tiny, clear, cool. That’s what I have to give, and that small stream is mine to nurture, to tend, to offer first to the people I love most, my first honor and responsibility. ### None > This is what I’m finding, every day, every hour: there is a way of living that is so sweet, so full, so whole and beautiful you’ll never want to go back once you’ve tasted it. > Do you know what it’s like to be rested? Truly rested? I didn’t, for about two decades. > Do you know what it’s like to feel connected, in deep and lovely ways, to the people you love most? > Do you know the sweetness of working hard and then stopping the working hard, realizing that your body and your spirit have carried you far enough and now they need to be tended to? I feel like a newborn in all this, blissful and delighted each time I take care of myself, like a new skill or a present. ### None > I’m not building a castle or a monument; I’m building a soul and a family. ### None > They are the only things in all the world that have been entrusted entirely to me, and I stewarded them poorly, worshiping for a time at the altars of productivity, capability, busyness, distraction ### None > I will spend my life on meaning, on connection, on love, on freedom. I will not waste one more day trapped in comparison, competition, proving, and earning. That’s the currency of a culture that has nothing to offer me. ### None > I gave myself away indiscriminately. Be careful how much of yourself you give away, even with the best of intentions. There are things you cannot get back ### None > Part of the crazy of it is that we don’t allow people to fall apart unless they’re massively successful. You can’t be just a normal lady with a normal job and burn yourself out—that’s only for bigshot people. And so the normal, exhausted, soul-starved people keep going, because we’re not special enough to burn out. > Burnout is not reserved for the rich or the famous or the profoundly successful. It’s happening to so many of us, people across all kinds of careers and lifestyles. > If you’re tired, you’re tired, no matter what. If the life you’ve crafted for yourself is too heavy, it’s too heavy, no matter if the people on either side of you are carrying more or less ### None > what I’m leaving behind in this season is the need to please everyone. I want to respect all people. I want to learn from all people, most especially people who are different from me and who disagree with me, but pleasing, for me, is over. ### None > Let’s do so much more than simply please people. Let’s see them and love them and delight them, look deeply into their eyes. Pleasing is a shallow and temporary joy, not nearly as valuable or rich as seeing or connecting or listening. ### None > After a lifetime of believing that the voices that mattered were Out There, approving or disapproving of me, I’m learning to trust the voice within, the voice of God’s Spirit, the whisper of my own soul. And when you learn to listen to that voice, the screaming of the crowd matters less. In some blessed moments, it matters not at all. > People, individual people, matter more to me than ever. I’m giving more focused time to the people I love than I ever have: eye to eye, uninterrupted, deeply connected. But People—as in What People Think, that nameless, faceless swamp of opinions—has less to say to me now than it ever has. And the freedom in that is astounding. ### None > One of my new things (of which there are many these days—I feel sort of adolescent, changing and growing and trying new things faster than I can keep up with, in a good way) is playing. > Playing: spending time lavishly, staring into space, wandering around the block, sitting on the kitchen floor eating blueberries with Mac. ### None > And so one of the tiny little things I’m learning to do is to play—essentially, to purposely waste time. Strategically avoid strategy, for five minutes at a time. Intentionally not be intentional about every second. Have no purpose—on purpose. > There are lots of conversations right now about how to do everything better/faster/smarter, how to streamline, multitask, layer, balance, flow, juggle. How to monetize, strategize, and on and on. This is good stuff. Necessary stuff. > But my jam these days is wasting time, playing, becoming aware of that internal engine that always wants to go faster, faster, faster. That engine is not the best part of me. My heart is the best part of me. ### None > And I’m finding that my heart loves to play. My heart loves to color and draw, loves to dance in the kitchen, loves to shoot baskets, loves to do cartwheels with my nieces in the front yard. > What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, nonstrategic, wild and beautiful five-minute breaks, reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not about the hustle? ### None > For some people, getting dressed is a delight, a way to tell the world who they are, a creative and inspiring process. Some people get a little charge of energy from the pure variety of what they buy and put together and wear. I’m finding that I get a little charge of energy from knowing exactly what I love and what I don’t, and being clear about the two. I’m more inspired by a near-uniform, a narrow set of parameters that make me feel most like myself. ### None > I want the stuff in my life to be light, easily managed, simple, so that the best of my energy is free for people, dreams, creativity; so that we can make memories around the table, eating meals served on those white plates; so that I can run after my kids in one of a half-dozen striped shirts; so that when you want to borrow a book, each one on my shelf tells a meaningful story. > How we live matters, and what you choose to own will shape your life, whether you choose to admit it or not. Let’s live lightly, freely, courageously, surrounded only by what brings joy, simplicity, and beauty. ### None > What it seems the world wants me to be: really skinny and really tired. If I could shrink and hustle, I’d be right there, skinny and tired. Shrink and Hustle. ### None > But I’m going to do me, and me is not skinny. I’m just not. And I’ve lived all my life, nearly forty years, believing a fantasy that I’m just about six months from finally being skinny. Okay, six more months. Six more. Oops. ### None > You know what? Six months from now, I bet I’m going to look pretty much like this. How do I know? Because I’ve basically been this size since I was fourteen years old. I think my body is trying to tell me something, and essentially it’s this: Hey, crazy lady, this is what God gave you. And you’re sort of the last to know. > And so at long last, I’m making peace with medium. And choosing to be happy. Rested, not exhausted, not afraid, not wired and panicky all the time. This is countercultural. This is rebellious. > What I want so deeply, and what I want to offer you: grace and nourishment. And those are the exact opposites of what I’ve been practicing for so long: exhaustion and starvation. ### None > And I will be happy. > Or actually, maybe not. Maybe I won’t be happy all of the time. Maybe when I’m sixty, instead of forty, I’ll be able to be happy with my size, with my flesh. But of course this is exactly the point: hospitality, not perfection. I’ll show hospitality even to the fact that I am sometimes unhappy with my body. Unhappiness, come right in, sit right down. We’ll sit together. You’ll stay until you tire of this, and go. > I will practice hospitality to my very own body—you can rest, you can be nourished, you can be loved. And I’ll also practice hospitality to my complicated feelings about my body. Because they’re a part of me, too. ### None > Some of my obsession with perfection rears its head on this topic. I don’t often these days expect my body to be perfect. But I do sometimes demand my outlook about it to be perfectly evolved and positive. I’m not there yet. > I’m going to both take up space and create space—for my body, and also for my sadness and my longing and my anger. There’s room here for good days and bad ones, for crying in dressing rooms and dancing in the kitchen. For sizing up my jeans . . . again, and for feeling something like beautiful when my husband captures a photo of me on the beach with our boys. ### None > I really wanted to have this part of my life nailed by the time I turned forty. I suppose I still could—we have a couple months. But I think this is one I might not ever nail. It might be one I just learn to make space for in my life and my heart. > Here’s to being medium. And here’s to sometimes being happy about it, and to giving myself space and grace when I’m not. ### None > When I look at my life these days, I see the threads of passion and identity that I’ve carried through my whole life: books and reading, people and connection, food and the table. These are the things I’ve always loved, and they continue to bring me great joy and fulfillment ### None > God says to the snow, “Fall on the earth.” That’s it. Just do one thing. Just fall. And then he says to the rain shower, “Be a mighty downpour.” Essentially, he’s saying: just do the thing I’ve actually created you to do. You’re rain: so rain. You’re snow: so snow. > I love the simplicity of that, the tremendous weight that takes off my shoulders. God’s asking me to be the thing he’s already created me to be. And he’s asking you to be the thing he’s already created for you to be. > He doesn’t tell the snow to thaw and become rain, or the rain to freeze itself into snow. He says, essentially: do your thing. Do the thing that you love to do, that you’ve been created to do. ### None > There was lots of space and silence. The stars were so bright, and the layers and layers of stress and regret and toughness I’d been wearing for ages slipped off one by one, until there I was, just me. > And without that shell, it’s like I could feel everything and see everything with such clarity. It was like Technicolor, and I knew that there was something important there for me to see. I could sense it. For the first time in a long time, I was really paying attention. ### None > Because I used to throw candy, right in the middle of it all. I used to throw candy no matter what. I used to be warm and whimsical. I used to believe in the power of silliness and memory-making and laughter. > And then I became the kind of person who threw candy as long as nothing else was going on—as long as it didn’t get in the way of being responsible. I threw candy at approved and sanctioned candy-throwing time, after all the work was done and things were safe and lunches were made. > And then I got so wrapped up in being responsible that it was never the right time to throw candy. > And then, the worst thing: I became the kind of person who made fun of candy-throwers . . . please—who has time? What is this, kindergarten? I’ve got a list, people, and a flight to catch. ### None > If this journey has been the peeling of an onion, layer by layer, or the un-nesting of Russian dolls, shedding external selves like skin, it seems we are reaching the center. > The center is reached, once again, through silence, time, honesty, loss; by leaving behind all the voices and expectations, all the selves and costumes of other times, things that worked then but don’t work any longer. ### None > This is, I realize, middle age. But here’s the thing: every new season of life is an invitation to leave behind the things of the season before, the trappings and traps that have long expired, right for then, no longer right for now. > Whatever passage you’re facing—entering your twenties or your sixties, facing life alone for the first time in a long time or learning the new dance of partnership, becoming a parent or becoming an empty nester, leaving student life behind or becoming a student once again—has the potential to be your sea-change, your invitation to leave behind what’s not essential and travel deeply into the heart of things. This is a pattern we can recreate all our lives, over and over, because who’s ever totally finished leaving things behind? ### None > She was a great question-asker, and she kept pushing me for greater and greater specificity. And then what? What would that look like? Exactly how? ### None > I know, I know, you can see the errors in that a mile away, but that’s how our weird little ideas are, so obvious to someone else but impossible to detangle ourselves. ### None > One thing I learned (which seems massively obvious in hindsight): we don’t all love the same things. > Look at your deepest dreams, and who you’ve always been—the things you love even though no one else does, the times in your life when you feel the most beautiful, even if no one else thinks so. ### None > The stack of pages sits on my dresser, red pen resting on top. The documents on my computer go untouched for days on end. Frankly, this isn’t like me. I am a procrastinator, and (like most writers, I think) I write in fits and starts. But there’s a new thing happening in me right now—a detachment, almost. ### None > My love affair with books endures, or, if anything, is growing. My appreciation for a well-crafted sentence or a perfectly chosen word is only rising, and my fascination with narrative and characterization and revelation, especially in memoir, is akin to an obsession. > My love for reading remains, but my desire to write is conspicuously waning . . . and I wonder sometimes if it’s because writing has become—or maybe always was—a way of proving myself, defining myself, articulating something about my identity and worth. ### None > Why do it? Because writing has become my love letter, my way of telling the love story that’s changed my life. > What fuels me now is love. It’s slower and deeper, less combustible and exciting. But it burns within my heart with such warmth and crackle that I never want to go back to the old fuel. The words come more slowly now, and the process is less frantic and jittery, and I think that’s just fine. ### None > For the first time in my life, my faith is the softest part of my life, the most healing, most life-giving space in my heart. Instead of one more thing to do or try or fail at, my relationship with God is the force of love that heals up all the other bruised and broken parts. Prayer is the safest, most nurturing activity I practice, almost like sitting in the sun, face tilted up, or imagining yourself as a child, crawling up into the lap of a treasured, trusted grandparent. ### None > The husband, perceptively, turned to Aaron, and asked about what this meant for him, for the shared responsibilities of our life. We all laughed, but it was a serious and valid question. > Aaron said, “Yeah, things are messier. She’s not running around cleaning and fussing all the time. I have to do more, and I’m not great at that stuff, and there’s more that we just leave undone. But here’s the thing: I have my wife back. And it’s totally, completely worth it.” > That’s why this journey matters. Because I was on a dangerous track, where I was giving the best of myself to people and things “out there,” while the tender inner core of my life and my home were increasingly stretched, pressurized, brittle. And now they’re not. Now the most beautiful, well-tended, truly nurtured and nourished parts of my life are the innermost ones, not the flashy public ones. That’s just as it should be. ### None > This is what I want to tell you: it’s better here, here in the place of love. This journey has brought about a meaningful transformation in every single part of my life. Every single part. My prayer life, my marriage, my family life, my friendships. I enjoy my work more. I feel a deep well of gratitude, a clean and grateful desire to live a life of meaning. I have the energy to live well, to dedicate myself to the things that matter to me, and that God has called me to. I have the security to truly rest, to truly enjoy this extraordinary world and all its offerings—books and art and meals and people and conversations and cities and beaches and night skies. And while I am deeply appreciative of the charms of this glittering world, I feel a sense of patience where I used to feel slight anxiety about the beauty of it: will I see it all? What if I miss something? ### None > In the space that used to be filled with a whirring ball of anxiety, now there is a new patience, a new settledness, a new desire to be just exactly where I am right now. I’m reveling in this new patience, this new groundedness, this new sense of peace. It’s so foreign, and it’s so lovely. > The deep well of contentedness that I feel these days is nothing short of a miracle, and it’s one I am thankful for every single day. ### None > Mac, our four-year-old, is the snuggliest, most affectionate little person on earth. And when he wants a hug or a kiss, he’ll fling out his arms and bellow, “Bring in the love!” in a deep voice, like a radio deejay. And then when you scoop him up, he pats you over and over on the back with his little hands and says, “There it is. There’s the love. There’s the love.” > Here it is. Here’s the love. Here’s the love: it’s in marriage and parenting. It’s in family and friends. It’s in sacrifice and forgiveness. It’s in dinner around the coffee table and long walks. It’s in the hands and faces of the people we see every day, in the whispers of our prayers and hymns and songs. It’s in our neighborhoods and churches, our classrooms and living rooms, on the water and in the stories we tell. ### None > The bad news is that there is no finish line here, no magical before-and-after. Probably you will not always live in this new, brave, grounded space. Let me be clear with you: I don’t. I still get pushed off center, thrown into fear and proving, wound up into a tangled mess of expectations and opinions of who I should be and what I should do. > But there’s good news, too: if we just keep coming back to the silence, if we keep grounding ourselves, as often as we need to, in God’s wild love, if we keep showing up and choosing to be present in both the mess and in the delight, we will find our way home, even if the road is winding, and full of fits and starts. > We will find our way home. ### None > Highlighted Image: images/img-239-1.jpg ### None > couldn’t even remember what whole felt like. I felt used up by the work, but of course it was I who was using the work, not the other way around. I was using it to avoid something, to evade something. I was using it to prevent myself from becoming acquainted with the self who sat hidden by all the accomplishment. I wanted to get to know that person, make friends with her. I wanted to learn to beckon her out from behind the accomplishment, and, when the wind piped up, take her off to the sea. ### None > love, grace, connection, peace. > When you decide, finally, to stop running on the fuel of anxiety, desire to prove, fear, shame, deep inadequacy—when you decide to walk away from that fuel for a while, there’s nothing but confusion and silence. You’re on the side of the road, empty tank, no idea what will propel you forward. It’s disorienting, freeing, terrifying. For a while, you just sit, contentedly, and contentment is the most foreign concept you know. But you learn it, shocking as it is, day by day, hour by hour. You sit in your own skin, being just your own plain self. And it’s okay. And it’s changing everything. > After a while, though, you realize you weren’t made only for contentment; that’s only half the puzzle. The other part is meaning, calling, love. And this is a new conversation, almost like speaking a second language—faltering, tongue-twisting, exhilarating. ### None > love and creativity and good intentions. He told me about how passionate he was about traveling and speaking, how much he loved spreading the message of his work to people all over the world, and how the heart of it is love: loving people wherever he met them, giving them the best of his energy and his attentiveness. It sounded amazing. > And then he told me the next part of the story, which is that he became so deeply skilled at making people feel loved in an instant, and along the way he lost the ability to demonstrate actual, real love to the woman and the children who were waiting at home. Making someone feel loved in an instant is so much easier than showing someone your love over and over, day in and day out. He had become a master at quick, intense, emotional connection, and with each experience of it, he found himself less able to connect in the daily, trudging, one-after-the-other kinds of ways. ### None > My no was heard, and it was valued. I was so close to doing something I didn’t want to do because I was afraid. I was so close to doing the wrong thing for my husband and my boys. > But I kept thinking of the man in the tuxedo, who knows now, because the end is coming, what matters more than anything. > The no I said today is making space for yes, something I haven’t had space for in a long time. In recent years, I started to sense that I was being run by something other than my own voice and calling, something other than God’s vision for my life. And I talked and talked about it, but unfortunately, mostly kept doing things the same old way—out of habit and fear and that crazy sense that just one more would be okay, now just one more, now just for him or her, for an old friend, to help someone out. > But sometimes you need to say not one more time. I won’t get this wrong again. Today was that day for me. My kids won’t know the difference. Mac won’t even remember. But I’ll know. I’ll know, when I tuck them in at night, when I make them jelly toast in the morning that I could have been somewhere else, and a man in a tuxedo, a man I’ve never met, showed me a better way. ### None > shame at every plot point. > I think of swimming with our boys, and how when one of them struggles, I don’t lecture. I don’t let them flounder a few extra seconds while I correct them sternly. I scoop them up, a hundred times an hour if necessary. I watch them, grab them, keep them close. When we’re safe again, when we’re close to shore, then we talk about deep water or clearing our ears when we dive down deep. > But before all that, rescue. Rescue. Rescue. Even the word moves me. And then the question: why did you doubt? Not: what’s wrong with you? Not the frustrated and rhetorical, “Why on earth did you do that?” that a parent asks a child after he knocks something off a counter. But a question, an invitation into conversation, a way of saying, “I’m here and I care, and let’s solve this together.” ### None > and freighted word, it seems, saccharine and over ### None > I told her that this journey from pushing to peace had changed my life . . . and that one of the unexpected complexities is that I didn’t need what I used to need from my work. I had learned the hard way what achievement could and couldn’t give, and my newfound learning made me want to cook dinners and snuggle with my boys and read novels, and not really care so much about what anyone “out there” thought about it. This is freedom, but is this the end of the road for a writer? > I find myself confused about the career I’ve found myself in: if the white-hot fire to be heard, to say something, to put something beautiful and honest out into the vast silence isn’t fanned by fear or desire to be respected or need to be seen, then what’s left? Do I have anything left to say? Or should I close my laptop and stop this endless chattering, this endless need to say something, anything? > Another way to say it: what powers our work when it’s no longer about addiction to achievement? > The last pages of this book have gone unwritten for a slightly unnerving amount of time. It’s winter, and I find myself utterly not interested in finishing. I’m reading voraciously, making tacos and curries, folding laundry, taking walks. I’m going to bed early with thick novels, watching old movies with the boys, setting the table for cozy meals with friends ### None > and hustle for my identity. > My life is smaller, slower, simpler. My days are less complicated. I sleep better, and wake with a heart of deep gratefulness. I’ve become able to appreciate silliness again, and subtle beauty, instead of the volume of my life being so screechingly loud only fireworks could get my attention. ### None > And ### None > And ### None > I bet ### None > And ### None > And ### None > That ### None > And ### None > Some