When I’ve regretting saying something on the internet, it’s never been about love. I’ve never regretting loving or encouraging or celebrating something. I have often regretted slamming or dismissing or criticizing something, because when I do that online, it’s outside of relationship, outside of shared understanding, outside of context. I.
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. Sink.
I believe still today what I have always believed: that God is good, that the world he made is extraordinary, and that his comfort is like nothing else on earth.
OPPORTUNITIES TO build friendship and community don’t always come at the most convenient times, but we have to grab them when we get the chance.
We have, each one of us, been entrusted with one life, made up of days and hours and minutes. We’re spending them according to our values, whether or not we admit it.
To pray is to say that there is more than I can see, and more than I can do. There is more going on than meets the eye.
I don’t believe that God’s up in heaven making things go terribly wrong in our lives so that we learn better manners and better coping skills. But I do believe in something like composting for the soul: that if you can find life out of death, if you can use the smashed up garbage to bring about something new and good, however tiny, that’s one of the most beautiful things there is.
Let’s be courageous in these days. Let’s choose love and rest and grace. Let’s use our minutes and hours to create memories with the people we love instead of dragging them on one more errand or shushing them while we accomplish one more seemingly necessary thing.
I’m learning, though, that the God who loves me isn’t just looking for apologies and report cards. He wants me to bring the vinegar so that I can taste the oil. He has all the time in the world to sit with me and sift through my fears and feelings and failings. That’s what prayer is. That’s what love is.
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.
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.
And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. – John Steinbeck.
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.
Busyness is an illness of the spirit. – Eugene Peterson.
I need grace and truth-telling and camaraderie from other moms. I need us to tell the truth about how hard it is, and I need us to help each other, instead of hiding behind the pretense and pressure of perfection.
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?
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.
You don’t have to damage your body and your soul and the people you love most in order to get done what you think you have to get done. You don’t have to live like this.
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.
Present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairy tale.