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

by Shauna Niequist

The two sins at play here, I believe, are gluttony and pride—the desire to escape and the desire to prove, respectively. I want to taste and experience absolutely everything, and I want to be perceived as wildly competent. The opposite of gluttony is sobriety, in the widest sense, which is not my strong suit. And the opposite of pride, one might say, is vulnerability—essentially, saying this is who I am . . . not the sparkly image, not the smoke and mirrors, not the accomplishments or achievements. This is me, with all my limitations, with all my weaknesses.

Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough.

I have left behind some ways of living that I once believed were necessary and right that I now know were toxic and damaging—among them pushing, proving, over-working, ignoring my body and my spirit, trusting my ability to hustle more than God’s ability to heal. My life is marked now by quiet,

Now I know that the best thing I can offer to this world is not my force or energy, but a well-tended spirit, a wise and brave soul.

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?

There has to be another way. And I’m going to find it. I’m going to make the space to taste my life once again. I’m going to find a new way of living that allows for rest, as much rest as I need, not just enough to get me through without tears, but enough to feel alive and whole, grounded and gracious. Things I haven’t been in years. What I ache for these days is space, silence, stillness. Sabbath.

You can use whatever term you want: besetting sin, shadow side, strength and weakness. The very thing that makes you you, that makes you great, that makes you different from everyone else is also the thing that, unchecked, will ruin you. For me, it’s lust for life. It’s energy, curiosity, hunger.

away. This is what I call fake-resting.

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.

So I fake-rested on Saturday, and then again on Sunday. The kids and Aaron napped. They played with Legos and went to bed early. They watched movies and ate leftover pumpkin pie. And I caught up on emails and ordered Christmas presents and cleaned out a closet and started packing for an upcoming trip. 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.

You can make a drug—a way to anesthetize yourself—out of anything:

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 quiet moments alone with God I sacrificed in order to cross a few things off the to-do list I worshiped.

Loving one’s work is a gift. And loving one’s work makes it really easy to neglect other parts of life.

What you need along the way: a sense of God’s deep, unconditional love, and a strong sense of your own purpose. Without those two, you’ll need from people what is only God’s to give, and you’ll give up on your larger purpose in order to fulfill smaller purposes or other people’s purposes.

That’s why knowing your purpose and priorities for a given season is so valuable—because those commitments become the litmus test for all the decisions you face.

excruciating. But as you regularly tell the truth about what you can and can’t do, who you are and who you’re not, you’ll be surprised at how some people will cheer you on. And,

I bet it all on busyness, achievement, being known as responsible, and escaping when those things didn’t work. What I see now is that what I really wanted was love, grace, connection, peace.

Geri said that when you begin to pray, pour out the vinegar first—the acid, whatever’s troubling you, whatever hurt you, whatever is harsh and jangling your nerves or spirit. You pour that out first—I’m worried about this child, or I’m hurt from this conversation. I’m lonely, I’m scared. I don’t know how this thing will even get fixed. Pour out all the vinegar until it’s gone. Then what you find underneath is the oil, glistening and thick: We’re going to be fine. God is real and good and present and working. This

I’ve been a Christian who hasn’t trusted God with her full self for a long time. I bring him my achievements. I destroy myself for my failings—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But it’s only recently that I’m relearning to do what I learned as a child: to bring my whole self, without shame and hiding, without pushing and striving.

but I was not a deeply loved friend or trusting and fragile daughter. In the same way that I didn’t allow myself to be taken care of by people, I didn’t know how to let myself be taken care of by God. Honestly, even that phrase makes me uncomfortable.

But I know that discomfort is often the way through, and so I began. Picturing the face of Jesus—a person, a friend, someone who loves me, knows me, sees me. And I began asking for help for all sorts of things that I didn’t feel I “deserved” to ask for—

But I’m just beginning to get comfortable once again, after many years of distance, to pray the contents of my own heart, the needs and longings of my own spirit. It feels awkward, sometimes. And it feels life-changing.

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.

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.

It wasn’t a good time to talk about it, but that’s part of the problem—when you’ve created a life for yourself that doesn’t leave space for talking about life-changing decisions, you’re doing it wrong.

I needed to know who should get the best of my energy: my boys or a company that asked me to speak for them.

needed. You will always regret something. You will always disappoint someone. But it isn’t going

be my husband and our...

The no I said today is making space for yes, something I haven’t had space for in a long time. In recent years,

But that night, he said, “I think you and Aaron are really brave. 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.”

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.

wrong. I had twisted it for my own purposes, a practice as old as the hills. We twist the sacred words to tell our own stories. We do it with Scripture; we do it in conversation. 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

How much more beautiful is our God when we free him from our own wounds and tired narratives. Tonight, as I fall asleep, I’ll picture

dust. I think that’s how I’ve lived for a long time without knowing it. I thought that the noise and the chaos and the busyness were always somehow finding me, but I couldn’t figure out how. What are the chances, I thought? Isn’t this

the drama is all her. The chaos is all me, as much as I don’t want to admit it. I create it, am drawn to it, kick it up when things get too quiet, because when I’m quiet I have to own up to the fact that quiet terrifies me,

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

would keep me safe. You cannot be a mystic when you’re hustling all the time. You can’t be a poet when you start to speak in certainties. You can’t stay tender and connected when you hurl yourself through life like being shot out of a cannon, your very speed a weapon you wield to keep yourself safe. The natural

bubble up inside of me. Must be nice. This is the thing: her life seemed lighter than mine, easier. More free, more crafted to reflect her own preferences and passions.

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

kingdom. Another way to say it: your family and your very self are included in the kingdom you wish to serve, and if they are not thriving, the whole of your ministry is not thriving.

I was an author who didn’t know how to author her own life. I thought that outside forces would guide me benevolently, rightly. They did not. And it was not their job. It was mine. I abdicated authority for my own choices. And what it led to was a broken body and depleted

For years, I have bridged that gap between differing opinions, tempered my own, made sure that everyone in the room was happy and fed and taken care of. It began as a clean love for hospitality, but over the years, I think, it devolved into care-taking and people-pleasing at the expense of my own self, at the expense of telling the truth about what I think and what I need and what matters most to me.

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.

Being outside reminds me of life and God and growth, and the energy and motion of nature, all things I forget so easily when I spend my life too much indoors, too much in a world of laptops and laundry and lists.

immediately, cursing and shivering. But I love the reminder that there is a whole wild world out there, animals and trees and moon. I try to breathe a few deep breaths of that bitter cold air, hopping from foot to foot, wind cutting through my flannel pajamas.

the wild and wonderful things that he’s made, that he’s making. I feel small, and I feel a part of it all, and I feel thankful, more than ever, for another day.

He says, essentially: do your thing. Do the thing that you love to do, that you’ve been created to do.