Welcome to Litsy!

This book was just what I needed, exactly what I needed. Full of hard won wisdom and beautiful stories of her life, mostly their move as a family go New York City, I felt like I had the wise older sister I have always wanted reading to me. The audio was fantastic too and includes a bonus nyc travel guide. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the first of Shauna's books that I have read and it was completely different from what I was expecting in the best of ways. Part memoir and part reflection and encouragement, Shauna has a gift for putting words together in beautiful ways and is not afraid to share her heart. I love the way she writes.

I think I would have gotten more from it if I listened to just 1 or 2 essays (sermons?) a day, rather than blasting through it in a few days as if it was a novel

This one was a nice reminder that we are all human and should love ourselves, flaws and all. #selflove

This felt like a conversation with a friend and it gave a voice to some things I‘ve felt deeply for a long times. It was the conversation I needed about finding quiet and connection.

“Many of our treasured connections have been severed in this season as the middle ground evaporates and the cry of ‘us versus them‘ becomes deafening.”

“I believe that calling myself a Christian means living up to Christ‘s example of brave, sometimes shocking love.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book felt like a hug.
A best friend showing up at my doorstep right when I needed her most.
A permission slip to do things differently these days because the last few years have presented us all with scenarios that should absolutely change us & push us to change course.
Shauna‘s writing is spiritual & faith-filled.
She is the queen of narrative and storytelling.
How lucky we all are that she shares her gift with all of us.

Is the world still beautiful? Still yes.
Do our stories still matter? Still yes.
Am I still hopeful? Still yes.
Will I trust people?
Will I trust God?
Will I trust myself?
Still yes, yes, yes.

We‘re okay with moving forward, as long as we get to control what‘s coming next. But that‘s not how it works. Not in improv, not in the water, not in life. Yes, and. Yes, and change course. Yes, into the unknown. Yes, even though everything‘s different. Still yes.

This seems to be at the heart of everything right now—a willingness to show up, unarmed and unfiltered and wildly imperfect, looking the reality of life full in the face. Willingness to show up, not out of a place of strength, but out of a shared vulnerability. Here we are. Here‘s what‘s been broken along the way. Here are our bruises and our scars, our fears and our secrets. Here I am, showing up anyway.

I‘m not perfect or shiny or bulletproof. The story of my life is not a fairytale. It‘s not a horror story. It‘s just a story like most stories—dark and light and beautiful and terrible and still being written.

I know now that I‘m strong enough, brave enough, whole enough to hold it all—how it was and how it ended. What I got wrong, what I made right, who I was, who I wasn‘t, who I‘ve yet to become. What I miss, what was lost, what‘s still unfolding.

Terrible things happen. Treasured things break. If you‘re like me, you get tumbled, and the worst of you is on full display. And then you turn back to yourself. You ask for help. You ask for forgiveness. You ask for a second chance. You get up and keep living. More than anything, you forgive yourself.

Life will break your heart in a thousand ways, but there‘s still music and there‘s still dancing. There‘s still coffee and toast. There‘s still kissing and there are still late dinners on busy sidewalks. Twinkly lights, novels, old movies, soft blankets, black-and-white photos, French braids,salty hot French fries dipped in mayo and ketchup…..we‘re still trying, still hoping, still getting it wrong and getting it right.

God‘s loving whisper pulses around every corner, and love and goodness still prevail, even when it seems like they don‘t.

“……what lasts is the long game. The legacy. The love that you build day by day. It‘s about choosing to be present, today and then tomorrow and then the next day. It‘s about getting up after a fall, over and over.”

There‘s no quick fix. There‘s no overnight success. There‘s no silver bullet. There‘s just starting where your feet are, letting yourself be a beginner, showing up anyway, over and over and over. And if that‘s not as triumphant and motivational as you want it to be, well, okay.

You just do all of it right in the middle of your normal, messy life. The greatest moments of your professional life unfold right while you‘re having a hard time sleeping or you go back to therapy or you think you might be in early menopause. All we have is right here, right now. Our bodies, our spirits, our fears, the people we love, the people we‘ve failed.

We‘re strong and we‘re not. We make progress and then we falter and we show up anyway. We show up anyway, again and again and again, and when we tell the truth about what we‘re carrying, it makes us feel less alone and less stuck, and when we show up anyway and tell others about what we‘re carrying, it makes everyone feel less alone and less stuck.

We learn to keep going, because all the times we thought we couldn‘t take one more step, we did. What‘s the option? We kept going then, and we can keep going now. It isn‘t pretty, but if I‘ve learned anything, it‘s that there‘s a lot more to life than pretty.

We learn to grab joy and delight when we can. We learn that we don‘t control plotlines, even though we forget sometimes. We learn that every good thing takes time and work and patience. We learn to be suspicious of overnight success or magic or solutions. We learn to ask for help, to ask for space, to ask for second chances. We learn how tough we are, and how beloved.

Life doesn‘t follow us. We follow it. We run after it, fight against it, catch up to it, make sense of it, get used to it—but it happens to us, not the other way around.

But our stories, our living-and-breathing, flesh-and-blood, toss-and-turn-all-night, hit-the-snooze-seven-times lives don‘t ever fit into the formats we‘ve chosen, and I guess I haven‘t learned that yet—and not for lack of opportunities.

If all you value is work, then productivity is the metric. But if you can shift out from under the weight of that, then the world refracts against itself like a kaleidoscope again, again, again. Not what did you make, but what did you heal from? Not how far did you go, but how hard did you fight to be free?

Increasingly, when I think about how to measure a day, a season, a life, I‘m committed to different metrics, to abundance instead of scarcity, to care instead of competition, to meaning instead of measuring.

Maybe what makes a day good or valuable or worthwhile is not what you accomplished, what work you did or thing you fixed, or task you checked off a list. Maybe there are other metrics—pleasure, connection, caring for someone, learning something new, experiencing delight.

Pain and loss are a reality of life for all of us, and they‘re not punishments or referendums on our fundamental worthiness. Life breaks us, and then we put ourselves back together, a little stronger each time, a little braver each time, a little freer each time. And goodness and peace and second chances and joy are not only for the unbroken. They‘re for all of us. They‘re for me. And they‘re for you.

“….self compassion and self care are acts of obedience, stewarding well what God has given to us, loving what he loves.”

He made us with love, watches over us with love.
Self compassion isn‘t unwillingness to take our own failings seriously. It‘s following God‘s example, tending to ourselves with the same kindness he shows us, even when we‘ve failed, especially when we‘ve failed.

We only heal by investing in the difficult and ugly work, even if it isn‘t pretty, even if it looks like a mess for a while.

“….I am allowed to heal. I am allowed to be happy. I am allowed to do work that I love, to celebrate, to feel joy and delight, to laugh. I am allowed to invest in my own healing, allowed to protect myself, allowed to tend loving to myself in all sorts of ways.”

That‘s who we are, who we‘ve always been—created on purpose, shaped by a word, loved beyond measure.

I hold on to the fact that God is. And he is love, which is the center of everything.

Bigger is better. Faster is better. Pretty and thin matter more than smart and kind, because those first things are the ones you can observe through a screen—and who has time anymore for boring and unsexy things like thinking and morality? I say that not to shame us but to encourage us to change course. We don‘t have to live like this. We can dismantle and rebuild. And we must.

We‘ve gotten approximately one billion things wrong along the way, it seems, as we‘ve built governments and systems and institutions and, certainly, religions. We‘ve built them in our image, with the structures and shapes that make sense to us—power, control, hierarchy.

There are so many reasons to walk away. But nothing gets healed or restored or brought back to life unless those of us who still believe in hope, in honesty, in confession and prayer and the sacred reality of the church gathering keep gathering, keep working, keep praying, keep making changes. And so I stay.

There are a million reasons not to stay. I could list several hundred thousand, at least. Many of our churches are sick, infected by racism and patriarchy. Many use shame and fear as ways to control. Many use manipulation and charm.

This is the process of a lifelong faith. Born again. Again. Again. You won‘t have to unravel and rebuild in such a comprehensive way every time—it seems to me that most people have several faith disruptions over a lifetime. But there are smaller quakes along the way too, and what a gift we would give ourselves if we could normalize this process.

You will not die, and your faith won‘t either. But it will change.

Yes, yes I hear you. I‘ll hold this with you. You‘re going to be okay. You‘re not the only one. There is a way through.

Flowers are still blooming, show-offy and bright. The world is still good, still beautiful, still dazzling and interesting and worth tasting and finding and savoring. God is still good, still faithful, still kind. There‘s a lot I don‘t know, but there‘s enough that I do.

There‘s still time. You can still grow into something beautiful. You can still leave something lasting and nourishing. It‘s never, ever too late to grow.

If you think you‘re too old to make a difference, you‘re not. If you think you don‘t have enough time left to build something really beautiful, you‘re wrong. If you think your legacy-leaving window has closed, it hasn‘t.
It‘s not too late for you. And it‘s not too late for me.

We‘re responsible to help create a world that values questions more than answers, that celebrates learning and not just knowing, that sees failure as a part of the process of success.

But also, there‘s so much we don‘t know, all of us. And the world would be a healthier, more honest, safer place for all of us if curiosity were seen as a virtue, not a weakness. Those of us who have power of any kind have a responsibility to every younger person or every person who feels pressure to pretend they know more than they do.

This is the question: What do we keep? What do we let go because it makes us lighter, because it opens up space, because it keeps us right in the moment and location of where we are, not yearning for a world that doesn‘t exist anymore, a self that doesn‘t exist anymore? And what do we keep because it‘s part of the story of who we are, not just in this moment, but over the years and decades, our essential selves?

So keep gathering, keep it weird, embrace the moveable feast, and practice brave, awkward, difficult hospitality as a way of fighting against isolation and othering, a way of healing what‘s been broken and loving our world and our own selves back to life.

Because people are great. And we need each other and we have so much to learn from one another…..Hospitality is the antidote to isolation, and we need it. I need it. Every neighborhood and town and city block needs it. And each one of us can be a part of it.

Being a Christian means devoting ourselves increasingly to the purposes of God on earth, to bringing the kingdom of Heaven to earth in big and small ways.

But the opposite is also true— and a season of prolonged isolation has not brought out the best in our culture. The political and religious and cultural differences became louder and more divisive. One antidote is hospitality, which requires bravery, intention, and willingness to extend beyond ourselves in the service of others.

We need to see each other‘s faces and hear each other‘s voices. We need to laugh together and cry together and sit in silence together. We were made for connection, for sitting shoulder to shoulder, for carrying one another, waking together.