Shauna Niequist Quotes & Sayings

Some of the most life-shaping decisions you make in this season will be about walking away from good-enough, in search of can't-live-without. — Shauna Niequist

I believed that work would save me, make me happy, solve my problems; that if I absolutely wore myself out, happiness would be waiting for me on the other side of all that work. But it wasn't. On the other side was just more work. More expectations, more responsibility. I'd trained a whole group of people to know that I would never say no, I would never say "this is too much". I would never ask for more time or space, I would never bow out. And so they kept asking, and I was everyone's responsible girl. — Shauna Niequist

Be very careful that you are not giving yourself to a pale imitation of life with Christ - life about Christ, or life generally near to Christ. — Shauna Niequist

I don't always change my clothes just because I'm leaving the house. I wear yoga pants 99 percent of the time, and I pretend that other people don't notice that I'm wearing my pajamas in public. — Shauna Niequist

Some of being an adult, though, is about protecting and preserving what we discover to be the best parts of ourselves, and here's a hint: they're almost always the parts we've struggled against for years. They make us weird or different, unusual but not in a good way. They're our child-sides, our innate selves, not the most productive or competitive or logical, just true. — Shauna Niequist

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness. Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands. — Shauna Niequist

I needed to know who should get the best of my energy: my boys or a company that asked me to speak for them. I needed to know what matters. And the image of that man in his tuxedo was all I needed. You will always regret something. You will always disappoint someone. But it isn't going to be my husband and our boys. It has been, sometimes. But I'm learning. And I'm making things right. — Shauna Niequist

In my best moments, when I calm down and listen closely, God says, I didn't ask you to become new and improved today. That wasn't the goal. You were broken down and strange yesterday, and you still are today, and the only one freaked out about it is you. — Shauna Niequist

Your pain doesn't define you. Your failures don't define you. Your createdness defines you. Christ in his goodness defines you". — Shauna Niequist

I know now that I can make it through more than I thought, with less than I thought. I know better than to believe that the changes are over, and I know better than to believe the next ones will be easier, but I've learned the hard way that change is one of God's greatest gifts and one of his most useful tools. — Shauna Niequist

Gossip is so dangerous, because it makes you feel like you told the truth. And you did. Just not to the person involved. It scratches that itch, that impulse to tell the truth, but it has no power to transform, and it destroys trust. When — Shauna Niequist

As I look back, in many instances, I simply followed the natural course of things. And great things happened, mostly. But over time I realized they weren't necessarily great things for me. They were maybe someone else's great things, and I was both taking up the space that was meant for them and not standing in my own space, like wearing someone else's shoes, leaving them barefoot. — Shauna Niequist

My life is a story about who God is and what He does in a human heart. — Shauna Niequist

Life is painful, and we carry with us so much disappointment and heartbreak. But I'm fighting to save some space inside me where I can create hope. — Shauna Niequist

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

I'm a reader and a storyteller, and God chose literature and story and poetry as the languages of my spiritual text. To me, the Bible is a manifesto, a guide, a love letter, a story. — Shauna Niequist

As a host, you set the tone, and you set it right away. It's so easy to get carried away with an ambitious menu, and then spend the whole night flinging things around your kitchen and being annoyed with your guests for having the audacity to try to talk with you. Terrible plan. Everyone would rather have a simpler meal and a happier host. — Shauna Niequist

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. — Shauna Niequist

We don't learn to love each other well in the easy moments. Anyone is good company at a cocktail party. But love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right, when we cry in the kitchen, when we show up uninvited with magazines and granola bars, in an effort to say, I love you. — Shauna Niequist

I tried all the outside ways first - I imagined the changes I needed to make were about time management, or perhaps having the cleaners come more often. I quickly found it was not about managing time or housekeeping. It was not about to-do lists or scheduling or minutes and hours. This journey has been about love, about worth, about God, about what it means to know him and be loved by him in a way that grounds and reorders everything. I — Shauna Niequist

But this is what I'm finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I'm waiting for, for that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets - this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience. — Shauna Niequist

You cannot taste the oil until you pour out the vinegar. — Shauna Niequist

WHEN WE know what's essential in our lives, everything else is negotiable. What are some things you don't do? What things could you intentionally leave undone so that you can focus more deeply on the things you feel called to and passionate about? — Shauna Niequist

Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that's when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration. — Shauna Niequist

But our hearts are more elastic than we think, and the work of forgiveness and transformation and growth can do things you can't even imagine from where you're standing now. — Shauna Niequist

Every year, you will trade a little of your perfect skin and your ability to look great without exercising for wisdom and peace and groundedness, and every year the trade will be worth it. I promise. — Shauna Niequist

One of my core fears is that someone would think I can't handle as much as the next person. It's fundamental to my understanding of myself for me to be the strong one, the capable one, the busy one, the one who can bail you out, not make a fuss, bring a meal, add a few more things to the list. For me, everything becomes a lifestyle. Everything is an addiction. — Shauna Niequist

Grace isn't about having a second chance; grace is having so many chances that you could use them through all eternity and never come up empty. It's when you finally realize that the other shoe isn't going to drop, ever. — Shauna Niequist

I don't make our bed in the morning, standing firm on the adolescent belief that there's no sense in doing something you're just going to undo at the end of the day. — Shauna Niequist

The heart of hospitality is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved. It's about declaring your table a safe zone, a place of warmth and nourishment. — Shauna Niequist

If you dig in and fight the changes, they will smash you to bits. They'll hold you under, drag you across the rough sand, scare and confuse you. But if you can find it within yourself, in the wildest of seasons, just for moment, to trust in the goodness of God, who made it all and holds it all together, you'll find yourself drawn along to a whole new place, and there's truly nothing sweeter. Unclench your fists, unlock your knees and also the door to your heart, take a deep breath, and begin to swim. — Shauna Niequist

In my experience, you can never go wrong with flowers and food, even when someone insists that there's nothing at all you can do. — Shauna Niequist

you just have to take one step, and that when you do, the next one will appear. — Shauna Niequist

So this is the dance, it seems to me: to be the kind of host who honors the needs of the people who gather around his or her table, and to be the kind of guest who comes to the table to learn, not to demand. — Shauna Niequist

I want to celebrate in the face of despair, dance when all we see on the horizon is doom. — Shauna Niequist

You want me to say that when you grow, finally, all the changes will stop, but they don't. There will be another one, another opportunity to grow, to shed your skin, to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, to break out of your cocoon like a perfect new butterfly. — Shauna Niequist

TAKE A minute to list the top five or six things you feel called and committed to in this season of life. Seeing them written on paper, in order, can help us orient ourselves and make decisions that spring from those priorities. — Shauna Niequist

TRAVEL BREATHES new life into our sense of what is possible, and allows us to see our lives from a new perspective. When was the last time a new location opened up something new in you? — Shauna Niequist

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. — Shauna Niequist

I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without even realizing it. — Shauna Niequist

Everything is interim. Everything is a path or a preparation for the next thing, and we never know what the next thing is. Life is like that, of course, twisty and surprising. But life with God is like that exponentially. We can dig in, make plans, write in stone, pretend we're not listening, but the voice of God has a way of being heard. It seeps in like smoke or vapor even when we've barred the door against any last-minute changes, and it moves us to different countries and different emotional territories and different ways of living. It keeps us moving and dancing and watching, and never lets us drop down into a life set on cruise control or a life ruled by remote control. Life with God is a dancing dream, full of flashes and last-minute exits and generally all the things we've said we'll never do. And with the surprises comes great hope. — Shauna Niequist

If we didn't have bodies, we couldn't feel the sun on our faces or smell the earthy, mushroom-y rich smell of the ground right after the rain. If we didn't have bodies, we couldn't wrap our arms around the people we love or taste a perfect tomato right at the height of summer. I'm so thankful to live in this physical, messy, blood-and-guts world. I don't want to live in a world that's all dry ideas and theorems. Food is one of the ways we acknowledge our humanity, our appetites, our need for nourishment. And so it may seem trivial or peripheral to some people, but to me, when I'm telling a story, the part about what we ate really does matter. — Shauna Niequist

I am still surprised on a regular basis at the love I feel for the spirit of God, the deep respect and emotion that I experience when I see an expanse of water or a new baby or the kindness of strangers. — Shauna Niequist

The problem is that the worldview I've chosen has melted like butter. I had a plan, and the plan is gone. — Shauna Niequist

Marriage isn't a business, co-owned and managed. It's a love story. The most important things we can give our marriage are time and romance, kissing and laughing. Laundry can wait, but a love story needs to be written a little bit every day. WHEN — Shauna Niequist

one of the chief aspects of mothering is prayer, — Shauna Niequist

To be true about life, too. If you dig in and fight the change you're facing, it will indeed smash you to bits. It will hold you under, drag you across the rough sand, scare and confuse you. This last season in my life has been characterized, more than anything else, by change. Hard, swirling, one-after-another changes, so many that I can't quite regain my footing before the next one comes, very much like — Shauna Niequist

Age, like numbers on a scale and letters on a report card, tells us very little of who we are. You decide every year exactly how young and how old you want to be. — Shauna Niequist

To those of us who believe that all of life is sacred every crumb of bread and sip of wine is a Eucharist, a remembrance, a call to awareness of holiness right where we are.
I want all of the holiness of the Eucharist to spill out beyond church walls, out of the hands of priests and into the regular streets and sidewalks, into the hands of regular, grubby people like you and me, onto our tables, in our kitchens and dining rooms and backyards. — Shauna Niequist

What people are craving isn't perfection. People aren't longing to be impressed; they're longing to feel like they're home. If you create a space full of love and character and creativity and soul, they'll take off their shoes and curl up with gratitude and rest, no matter how small, no matter how undone, no matter how odd. — Shauna Niequist

sometimes the very best thing to do, I find, is to turn off the news and keep writing our own stories and lullabies. — Shauna Niequist

We don't come to the table to fight or to defend. We don't come to prove or to conquer, to draw lines in the sand or to stir up trouble. We come to the table because our hunger brings us there. We come with a need, with fragility, with an admission of our humanity. The table is the great equalizer, the level playing field many of us have been looking everywhere for. The table is the place where the doing stops, the trying stops, the masks are removed, and we allow ourselves to be nourished, like children. We allow someone else to meet our need. In a world that prides people on not having needs, on going longer and faster, on going without, on powering through, the table is a place of safety and rest and humanity, where we are allowed to be as fragile as we feel. — Shauna Niequist

He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. - Psalm 18:16 — Shauna Niequist

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. — Shauna Niequist

What makes me feel alive and connected to God's voice and spirit in this world is creating opportunities for the people I love to rest and connect and be fed at my table. I believe it's the way I was made, and I believe it matters. For many years, I didn't let it matter, for a whole constellation of reasons, but part of becoming yourself, in a deeply spiritual way, is finding the words to tell the truth about what it is you really love. — Shauna Niequist

That's why travel is so important, among other reasons: to get far enough away from our everyday lives to see those lives with new clarity. When you're literally on the other side of the world, when you're under the silent sea, watching a bright, silent world of fish and coral, when you're staring up at a sky so bright and dense with stars it makes you gasp, it's in those moments that you begin to see the fullness of your life, the possibility that still prevails, that always prevails. — Shauna Niequist

Even though my fear was detonating over and over like bombs dropping, the fragile and fractured wings of my heart dared to beat as well, and alongside all that fear and all that gratitude, I felt the first precious rush of hope. — Shauna Niequist

It's so easy to think that because you can't do something extraordinary, you can't do anything at all. It's easy to decide that if you can't overhaul your entire life in one fell swoop, then you might as well just do nothing. We started where we could, with what we had. I hope it's just the beginning for us. — Shauna Niequist

Now that I am a mother, I understand what Mother's Day is about: it's about looking through our lives and recognizing the act of mothering everywhere we see it, and more than that, recognizing that when any of us mother
when we listen, nuture, nourish, protect
we're doing sacred work. — Shauna Niequist

When I get frustrated that there aren't enough hours in a day, that I can't do enough or be enough or experience everything I want to just exactly right now, my mom reminds me in her gentle way that this is not where she thought she'd be at sixty, and that the best is yet to come. She teaches me, through her words and her actions, that if you take the next right step, if you live a life of radical and honest prayer, if you allow yourself to be led by God's Spirit, no matter how far from home and familiarity it takes you, you won't have to worry about what you want to be when you grow up. You'll be too busy living a life of passion and daring. — Shauna Niequist

Life hands us opportunities at every turn to get over ourselves, to get outside ourselves, to wake up from our own bad dreams and realize that really lovely things are happening all the time. — Shauna Niequist

But our goal, remember, is to feed around our table the people we love. We're not chefs or restaurateurs or culinary school graduates, and we shouldn't try to be. Make it the way the people you love want to eat it. — Shauna Niequist

I believe that God is making all things new. I believe that Christ overcame death and that pattern is apparent all through life and history: life from death, water from a stone, redemption from failure, connection from alienation. I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy. — Shauna Niequist

We create because we were made to create, having been made in the image of God, whose first role was Creator. He was and is a million different things, but in the beginning, he was a creator. That means something for us, I think. We were made to be the things that he is: forgivers, redeemers, second chance-givers, truth-tellers, hope-bringers. And we were certainly, absolutely, made to be creators. — Shauna Niequist

But entertaining isn't a sport or a competition. It's an act of love, if you let it be. You can twist it and turn it into anything you want - a way to show off your house, a way to compete with your friends, a way to earn love and approval. Or you can decide that every time you open your door, it's an act of love, not performance or competition or striving. You can decide that every time people gather around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving. You can decide. — Shauna Niequist

One thing's for sure: if you decide to be courageous and sane, if you decide not to overspend or overcommit or overschedule, the healthy people in your life will respect those choices. And the unhealthy people in your life will freak out, because you're making a healthy choice they're not currently free to make. Don't for one second let that stop you. — Shauna Niequist

A story is never about one person. It has a full cast of characters, connected by blood or love or jealousy. There's nothing small or inconsequential about our stories. There is, in fact, nothing bigger. And when we tell the truth about our lives - the broken parts, the secret parts, the beautiful parts - then the gospel comes to life, an actual story about redemption, instead of abstraction and theory — Shauna Niequist

everything is interim. Every season that I thought was stable and would be just how it was for a long time ended up being a preparation or a path to the next thing. When you decide to be on this journey with God, everything is interim. — Shauna Niequist

Now I know that in the same way I've always believed God's Spirit dwells deeply in this world, it also dwells deeply in me. I've known that, cognitively, but my life spoke otherwise. 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. My — Shauna Niequist

We decide where the time goes. There's so much freedom in that, and so much responsibility. — Shauna Niequist

When you offer peace instead of division, when you offer faith instead of fear, when you offer someone a place at your table instead of keeping them out because they're different or messy or wrong somehow, you represent the heart of Christ. — Shauna Niequist

After all these years, the heaviest thing isn't the number on the scale but the weight of the shame I've carried all these years
too big, too big, too big. — Shauna Niequist

When you haven't yet had your heart really broken, the gospel isn't about death and rebirth. It's about life and more life. It's about hope and possibility and a brighter future. And it is, certainly, about those things.
But when you've faced some kind of death - the loss of someone you loved dearly, the failure of a dream, the fracture of a relationship - that's when you start understanding the central metaphor. When your life is easy, a lot of the really crucial parts of Christian doctrine and life are nice theories, but you don't really need them. When, however, death of any kind is staring you in the face, all of a sudden rebirth and new life are very, very important to you. — Shauna Niequist

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. — Shauna Niequist

There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don't lose yourself at happy hour, but don't lose yourself on the corporate ladder, either. — Shauna Niequist

Many of the most deeply spiritual moments of my life haven't happened just in my mind or in my soul. They happened while holding my son in the middle of the night, or watching the water break along the shore, or around my table, watching the people I love feel nourished in all sorts of ways. — Shauna Niequist

It's sloppy theology to think that all suffering is good for us, or that it's a result of sin. All suffering can be used for good, over time, after mourning and healing, by God's graciousness. But sometimes it's just plain loss, not because you needed to grow, not because life or God or anything is teaching you any kind of lesson. The trick is knowing the difference between the two. — Shauna Niequist

full life is not the same as a full calendar. Full life is lived when the whole system works together, when rest and home and peace live hand in hand with taste and sparkle and go. I've believed in the craziness for too many years, and while I still have a lot of questions, the answer I need to be giving most often these days is NO. — Shauna Niequist

There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place. — Shauna Niequist

The world is alive, blinking and clicking, winking at us slyly, inviting us to get up and dance to the music that's been playing since the beginning of time, if you bend all the way down and put your ear to the ground to listen for it. — Shauna Niequist

there are interesting, smart, kind people just absolutely everywhere, and that when you do things you care about, you find quick kinship with people who are passionate about those same things. — Shauna Niequist

When I've practiced acceptance, when I've floated instead of fought, when I've rested, even for a moment, on the surface instead of wrestling the water itself. And those moments are like heaven. — Shauna Niequist

These things can either strip us down to the bone and allow us to become strong and honest, — Shauna Niequist

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 then true, slow, awkward and painful connection with someone who sees all the worst parts of you. Your act is easy. Being with you, deeply with, is difficult. — Shauna Niequist

Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments. — Shauna Niequist

To all the secret writers, late-night painters, would-be singers, lapsed and scared artists of every stripe, dig out your paintbrush, or your flute, or your dancing shoes. Pull out your camera or your computer or your pottery wheel. Today, tonight, after the kids are in bed or when your homework is done, or instead of one more video game or magazine, create something, anything.
Pick up a needle and thread, and stitch together something particular and honest and beautiful, because we need it. I need it.
Thank you, and keep going. — Shauna Niequist

IT'S EASY to long for nothing but good news and carefree days, but a full life includes the broken and dark and difficult parts, too. Thank God for walking with you in the seasons of heartbreak. — Shauna Niequist

Good friendships are like breakfast. You think you're too busy to eat breakfast, but then you find yourself exhausted and cranky halfway through the day, and discover that your attempt to save time totally backfired. — Shauna Niequist

The natural world is so breathtakingly beautiful. People are so weird and awesome and loving and life-giving. Why, then, did I try so hard for so long to get away without feeling or living deeply? — Shauna Niequist

This is what I know: God can make something beautiful out of anything, out of darkness and trash and broken bones. He can shine light into even the blackest night, and he leaves glimpses of hope all around us. An oyster, a sliver of moon, one new bud on a black branch, a perfect tender shoot of asparagus, fighting up through the dirt for the spring sun. New life and new beauty are all around us, waiting to be discovered, waiting to be seen. — Shauna Niequist

Risotto is one of those dishes you just have to try a few times yourself, to teach yourself the moves and sounds and smells and textures. This is a guide map, but kind of a rough and tattered one. — Shauna Niequist

You can make your point all day long, and you can even be right about your point, but if you stop listening, if you stop really hearing and seeing that other person, something fundamental will be lost. — Shauna Niequist

No one lives out an exciting calling without just plunging forward at some point, full of fear and uncertainty. — Shauna Niequist

If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health. — Shauna Niequist

I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility. — Shauna Niequist

We live in a world that values us for how fast we go, for how much we accomplish, for how much life we can pack into one day. — Shauna Niequist

Each of us has been created by a holy God with love, on purpose and for a purpose. But so many of us feel afraid or unprepared. This is the secret, though: No one is prepared enough. No one is perfectly ready. — Shauna Niequist

Or it can be the reason we use to justify our anger and the sharp tones in our voices for the rest of our lives. — Shauna Niequist

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. — Shauna Niequist