Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living

by Shauna Niequist

As I learn to trust the stillness I’ve been running from for so long, I’m finding that I crave more and more silence.

I’ve tried everything to lower the volume in my head, because things really do get a little loud in there.

When you insulate yourself from some of it, you insulate yourself from all of it.

This never dawned on me that when you protect yourself from feeling the pain you end up effecting your ability to feel all other things as well.

taking up the space that was meant for them and not standing in my own space,

I lose track of my own voice in a crowd very easily.

“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.”

“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 wish I could tell you that everything changed in an instant after that first video shoot. Or that everything really, really did change after the second. But I’ve always been a stubborn one, slow to change, ignoring whispers until the screaming starts. 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.

Tears everywhere. I get so caught up in trying to make an impact that I forget the impact I need to focus on is at home.

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.

your family and your very self are included in the kingdom you wish to serve,

When I begin the day in quiet on the porch, it connects me to God through prayer, and it connects me to God through his creation.

Each soul, every soul is worthy, because God made every soul, and because of his love, his Son came to earth and walked among us, because God’s love for us is so deep and wide and elaborate that he wants to be with us, to walk with us, to teach us how to live in that love and worthiness.

But here’s the thing: I have my wife back. And it’s totally, completely worth it.”

My husband has literally said these exact words.

the love I was looking for all along is never found in the hustle. You can’t prove it or earn it or compete for it. You can just make space for it, listen for it, travel all the way down to the depth of your soul, into the rhythmic beating of your very own heart, where the very spirit of God has made his home, and that’s where you’ll find it.

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.