Lisa Cooper

“Along the way I’ve realized that most of the hard work during my last couple seasons has been claiming authority over my own life. This is not a group decision. We’re not voting for “most this” or “most that” in our yearbooks. This is actually my life, and it doesn’t matter a bit if it would be lovely for someone else to live. What does matter: does it feel congruent with how God made me and called me? Some of us are made to be faster, and some slower, some of us louder, and some quieter. Some of us are made to build things and nurture things. Some of us are made to write songs and grants and novels, all different things. 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. I thought I needed to be fast and efficient, sparkly and shiny, battle-ready and inexhaustible. There was, I will be honest with you, a lot of pressure from all sorts of places. I could be those things and so I was, and then lots of people told me I had a responsibility to do more and more and more. For a long time, I listened to them. 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.”
― Shauna Niequist, Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living