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

by Shauna Niequist

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.

“Be not afraid, my dear one. He says, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Be still and know. Be still. Be. It starts with ‘be.’ Just be, dear one.”

One of the reasons I believe in God is because I can see so clearly his loving and hilarious hand, guiding us to the unlikeliest of places to find the healing we’ve been searching for all along.

But it’s in the silence that you can finally allow yourself to be seen, and it’s in the being seen that healing and groundedness can begin.

I’m an avoider, an escaper, an anywhere-but-here with all my thoughts and feelings kind of person.

You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck. —Rumi

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.

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.

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.

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,”

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

In seasons of deep transformation, silence will be your greatest guide. Even if it’s scary, especially if it’s scary, let silence be your anchor, your sacred space, your dwelling place.

“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.

“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.

But I’ve always been a stubborn one, slow to change, ignoring whispers until the screaming starts.

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.

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. 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.

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 ...

But quick charm is like sugar—it rots us. It winds us up and leaves us jonesing, but it doesn’t feed us. Only love feeds us. And love happens over years, repetitive motions, staying, staying, staying. Showing up again. Coming clean again, being seen again. That’s how love is built.

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.

I’ve been outrunning my feelings for decades, only very recently beginning to sit with, sit still, dwell.

frequently I pay more attention to how I should feel about something than how I actually do feel about it.

I was so close to doing something I didn’t want to do because I was afraid.

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.

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.

The ache for perfection keeps us isolated and exhausted—we keep people at arm’s length, if that, and we keep hustling, trying trying trying to reach some sort of ideal that never comes. I’ve missed so much of my actual, human, beautiful, not-beautiful life trying to force things into perfect.

I’m finished hustling for perfect. It didn’t deliver what they told me it would.

Present over perfect living is real over image, connecting over comparing, meaning over mania, depth over artifice. Present over perfect living is the risky and revolutionary belief that the world God has created is beautiful and valuable on its own terms, and that it doesn’t need to be zhuzzed up and fancy in order to be wonderful.

Perfect has nothing on truly, completely, wide-eyed, open-souled present.

I realized that all my life I’d had the story 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.

Before Jesus scolds Peter, first he rescues him. I’ve had that wrong all my life. I always picture the falter, the failure, the scolding, then finally the begrudging hand of help: I knew you couldn’t do it yourself. Do I have to do everything? But now I was seeing something entirely new: the rescue came first. When Peter faltered, Jesus reached out a hand before saying a word. What an extraordinary thing!

I haven’t often prayed to a God who says, “We’ve got this; we’ll do it together. Your failure doesn’t rattle me. Your limitations don’t bother me.” But I do now, little by little. Because now when I step out of that boat, I’m starting to see a man with love in his eyes, a man who will rescue and rescue and rescue, and then bring me to safety, despite my faithlessness, despite my failure.

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, that all my life I’ve been wrapping myself in noise and chaos the way Pigpen is all wrapped up in dust and dirt. And that noise protects me from feeling all the things I don’t want to feel.

Instead,

I’m finding that willingness to be fragile actually makes me strong.

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 ...

If green had a smell, it would smell just exactly like that, like the smell in the Midwestern spring and summer just as it begins to rain.

Love, though, doesn’t allow hiding. Love invites whole selves and whole stories out into the light. Friendship sees into us, into our secrets, into our elaborate games and excuses. Friendship carries all this mess together, so that you don’t have to hide, so that you carry it together. What a miracle!

there is nothing in all the world more attractive than a man who is tender with his small son, who washes his hair and gently wipes the water out of his blue eyes.

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.

Your calling is not defined only by the fruit it provides to the 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 not well, but I was very, very productive. And it didn’t occur to me to stop.

I set myself aflame as often as necessary, whatever it took to keep going, to build, to help; but I’m learning slowly that wholeness prevails.

I’m not building a castle or a monument; I’m building a soul and a family.

This body and soul will become again what God intended them to be: living sacrifices, offered only to him. 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.

Of all the things I’m learning to leave behind, one of the heaviest is the opinion of others.

Some of 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.

Hustle is the opposite of heart.