Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living

By Shauna Niequist

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Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough. That seems entirely true. The inciting incident for life change is almost always heartbreak – something becomes broken beyond repair, too heavy to carry; in the words of the recovery movement, unmanageable.

(Niequist 2016, 24)

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 earn something kids know intuitively.

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.

Frankly, the men I know don’t generally struggle with this. They’ve been raised to eat when they’re hungry, sleep when they’re tired, run when they’re antsy, leave when they’re ready to leave. But even the most driven, articulate, strong women I know struggle to really meet their own needs.

(Niequist 2016, 36)

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.

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? Well, certainly, my Dutch roots might have something to do with it, and my Midwestern upbringing.

(Niequist 2016, 36-37)

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.

(Niequist 2016, 38)

I couldn’t imagine a world of unconditional love or grace, where people simply enter into rooms because the door is open to everyone. The world that made sense to me was a world of earning and proving, and I was glutting it out just like everyone around me, frantically trying to prove my worth.

(Niequist 2016, 41)

But you can’t have yes without no. Another way to say it: if you’re not careful with your yeses, you start to say no to some very important things without even realizing it. In my rampant yes-yes-yes-ing, I said no, without intending to, to rest, to peace, to groundedness, to listening, to deep and slow connection, built over years instead of moments. 

All my yeses brought me to a shallow way of living – an exhausting, frantic lifestyle that actually ended up having little resemblance to that deep, brave yes I was searching for. 

(Niequist 2016, 49)

This is what I know for sure: along the way you will disappoint someone. You will not meet someone’s needs or expectations. You will not be able to fulfill their request. You will leave something undone or poorly done. Possibly, this person will be angry with you, or sad. You’ve left them holding the bag. Or maybe instead of sadness or anger, they’ll belittle you or push all your shame buttons – maybe they’ll say things like, “I guess you’re just not a hard worker.” Or, “I guess you’re just a low-capacity person.” Or, “I thought I could count on you.” These are basically sharp blades straight into the hearts of people like me, people who depend very heavily on meeting people’s expectations. 

But here’s the good news: you get to decide who you’re going to disappoint, who you’re going to say no to. And it gets easier over time, the disappointing.

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.

(Niequist 2016, 53)

To do this, though, you have to give even the people closest to you – maybe especially the people closest to you – realistic expectations for what you can give to them. 

We disappoint people because we’re limited. We have to accept the idea of our own limitations in order to accept the idea that we’ll disappoint people. I have this much time. I have this much energy. I have this much relational capacity.

(Niequist 2016, 55)

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. 

(Niequist 2016, 61)

What kept me running? That’s the question I keep returning to, the lock I keep fiddling with. I was highly invested in maintaining my reputation as a very capable person. I thought that how other people felt about me or thought about me could determine my happiness. When I see that on the page now, staring back at me in black and white, I see how deeply flawed this idea is, how silly even. 

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. Essentially, my identity then depended on outward approval, which changes on a dime. So you dance and you please and you placate and you prove. You become a three-ring circus and in each ring you’re an entirely different performing animal, anything anyone wants you to be.

(Niequist 2016, 63)

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. 

(Niequist 2016, 63-64)

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.

And then at one point, the volume of that inner violence started to scare me. I could recognize it as separate from me, not built on the true materials of my life or circumstances, but more like a curtain dropping, like a virus infecting everything. It became harder and harder to walk well on those days, even while I knew they were an aberration.

I felt that in many ways I was making good progress, inching toward a life marked more by presence and connection and less by exhaustion and competition. But this vein of inner darkness remained. If anything, maybe it became more visible once I slowed down a little. Maybe it’s part of the reason I’d been running. 

(Niequist 2016, 67-68)

So I rran and ran and talked and talked and spun circles around my life, avoiding that emptiness. What I find now, though, is that the stillness is where I feel safe and grounded, and that the frantic living spins me away from myself, from my center, from my new and very precious awareness of how deeply I’m loved. I return to the silence to return to love. 

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. 

(Niequist 2016, 72)

Our friend Ian, an Episcopal priest, taught us something I’d never heard, something that shaped all of us: on a rainy night,, with the raindrops echoing loudly on the roof, he told us that we never take communion. We receive communion. Taking, he said, is what happened in the garden. Receiving is what will put the world back together again. Ian began his message by reading a long passage from Patti Smith’s Just Kids, a book I adore, and it’s moving to me that my lifelong love for literature and language finds a place in that dark chapel on Sunday nights.

(Niequist 2016, 82)

I believe that certain strains of our faith have led us to this spot – they shouldn’t have, of course, but this is what humans do sometimes. Christians have made too much out of work in the same way that Americans have begun engaging in yoga competitions – twisted-up versions of a purer thing. Christians want to make a difference. So we do, and we do, and we do, and then we find ourselves exhausted.

In more fundamentalist strains of the faith, there’s great value on happiness, constant kindness, selflessness above all else. These are wonderful things … that, over time, make it really hard to say things like, “I need help.” Or, “I can’t do this anymore.” Many Christians, women especially, were raised to be obedient and easy, to swallow feelings, to choke down tears. This has not served us well. This has made it far too easy to injure our bodies and our souls in the name of good causes – there are enough good causes to go around. 

Christians ought to be decidedly anti-frantic, relentlessly present to each moment, profoundly grounded and grateful. Why, then, am I so tired? So parched? So speed-addicted? Again, the fault lies not with the tradition but with the perversion of it, and with the Christian herself – in this case, of course, me. 

(Niequist 2016, 85)

And so I fumbled around, telling her essentially that I pray to God, some version between Father and Spirit, definitely not Jesus. More like the idea of God, philosophically – to the sovereign, divine reality. She looked confused, understandably. Could you pray to Jesus? She asked. Would that be uncomfortable for you? Could you pray to him as though he is right here in this room, a man, alive, with a body?

(Niequist 2016, 89)

I love being a Christian, but I think sometimes I err on the side of believing in the ideals, or, on the other side, connecting with God through his creation, through the face of a child or the words of a friend or the color of the sky. The ideals and the tactile stuff of the world, yes, but the person of Christ: almost not at all. I don’t’ think that’s particularly indicative of my church or my tradition – I think that might just be me, and I wanted to figure out why.

(Niequist 2016, 90)

“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.”

(Niequist 2016, 91)

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.”

In my experience, our culture teaches men to do this quite well. Women, it seems, have a much trickier time with it. It’s only quite recently that women have even been permitted to ask these questions, and we’re just getting the hang of it, many of us, fumbling and awkward – really, really? Me? Are you sure?

Yes, darling I’m sure. You get to tell the truth about what you love and who you are and what you dream about. We’ll learn this new path together. 

(Niequist 2016, 101)

I feel like I’m catching up to it, barely. Quick charm will always be easier for me than deep connection. People out there are easier than the ones in here.

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. 

(Niequist 2016, 114)

Brave is walking away from the “strike while the iron’s hot” mentality that pervades our culture. Brave is being intentional about taking your marriage from “fine” to “can’t live without you.” Because fine is not fine at all. Fine is like a mesh sieve, enough space for all the important things to slip through, and all you’re left with is to-do lists and resentments.

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 then 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.

(Niequist 2016, 126)

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. 

(Niequist 2016, 130)

This makes me wonder, of course, about all of Scripture … how many other stories have I twisted to tell my own story? How many images of God have I constructed out of my own wounds? And what would happen if I stepped inside of them like I did this one and found the narrative fundamentally altered?

Thank God for that gentle priest, for a tribe that gathers on Sunday nights, for the ancient tradition of the prayer of imagination. Sometimes we read the same passages all our lives without realizing we’ve rewritten them in our own images. How much more beautiful is our God when we free him from our own wounds and tired narratives. 

(Niequist 2016, 139)

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?

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. 

(Niequist 2016, 149)

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

One of the peculiarities of being a writer is that your work is judged and measured publicly all the time. This many stars. This many books sold. Reviews and criticisms, detailed speaker evaluations. There is not shortage of opinions. 

Writing is such good training for the rest of life, if you allow it to be, because it forces you to get comfortable with failure, with the wide range of impossible-to-meed expectations and standards. I hear all the time that I’m both too conservative and too liberal, oto shallow and too deep, too casual and too formal. 

(Niequist 2016, 171)

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 nor be intentional about every second. Have no purpose – on purpose.

(Niequist 2016, 174-175)

It’s been said a million times that the most important things aren’t things. But if we’re not careful, it seems, many of us find ourselves overwhelmed by all the stuff we have to manage, instead of focused on what we’re most passionate about – writing or making or painting or connecting with people. 

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.

(Niequist 2016, 184-185)

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References

Niequist, Shauna. 2016. Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living. N.p.: Zondervan.

ISBN 9780-0-310-34299-1