Present Over Perfect

table later—and while I stir, I’ll talk on the phone with one
of the pastors at our church. I wouldn’t be working there,
but I’d help in some way. I told her I wanted to write and be
married and be a mom of boys and gather people in our
home and help our church. Those are the things I wanted
more than anything in the world.
I didn’t move forward on this plan at all. I kept working
at our church and then another, in an obsessive, workaholic
way, letting work shadow over absolutely everything. Then
I did become a writer, but the writing life quickly became
the traveling-and-speaking life, almost accidentally—the
obvious next step to everyone but me.
On paper, it looked like I was living that very dream
from that conversation all those years ago. Unless the paper
was my travel schedule. I wasn’t standing at my stove very
often, or hosting people around our table. I wasn’t in town
long enough to make a meaningful contribution at my
church. I wasn’t even a writer very often. I was grinding out
a grueling travel schedule that I didn’t enjoy but didn’t
know how to dismantle. Everyone was so happy about it,
about each new opportunity. I didn’t know till much later
how profoundly unhappy I was about it. I longed to be back
in that blue room, back at the stove, back on the lawn
playing soccer with my boys.
And somewhere along the line, I developed the theology
that said, “If it’s working, it must be God’s will; and if it’s
God’s will, even if you hate it, you have to do it.” I know, I
know, you can see the errors in that a mile away, but that’s