Happy End of the Month!
Believe it or not, folks, March is just around the corner! 😳
📌 In This Edition…
- Honest Update: Presence > Performance
🌿 Presence Over Performance
This newsletter was supposed to go out this morning. It didn’t.
I’ve been buried in my manuscript this month—deep in chapters that are harder to write than I expected. Not technically difficult, but personally heavy. The kind of hard that makes you sit still longer than you’d like and revisit those dark places you thought you’d already made peace with and moved on from. I never expected it to weigh on me this much at this stage of the writing process.
I have cried almost every day writing this book (if you’ve ever done house church with me, you are well acquainted with my lachrymose blubbering from time to time). Sometimes, it’s a quiet tear streaking down my face. Other days, it has been full-on weeping—shoulders shaking. Ugly crying, as ‘the youths’ say.
Somewhere along the way this month, I started putting pressure on myself about this newsletter—another performance metric. Another thing to get right. I needed something scholarly. Something polished. A catchy takeaway or clever discovery for my loyal readers. You know, doing the authorly things.
Which is ironic, considering the book I’m writing.
Page after page, I’m confronting the ways I’ve spent most of my life measuring myself—by output, by consistency, by whether I’m “getting it right.” And yet here I am, doing the exact same thing with this simple email.
Here’s the truth: I don’t need a clever insight to send today. I just need to show up. Imperfectly. Honestly. But still here. Without trying to prove anything or flex my nonexistent cultured muscles.
That’s the lesson this month keeps pressing into me: beloved is not something I arrive at after I’ve done enough. It’s not produced by eloquent or well-articulated thoughts. It’s not meant to be tracked or measured.
It’s just: Be Loved. Its presence. It’s the place I’m meant to start from. The place that is meant to root me. And when I forget that, even the smallest things—like writing to you—start to feel heavy.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father… that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend… the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”
That’s the prayer I keep returning to from Ephesians 3. Being rooted and grounded in love first. Everything else must flow out of that identity, or it all falls apart.
Where do you notice yourself slipping back into performance?
Or flipped—where in your life do you simply need to show up and be present, imperfect as you are?
In case you are here for the hacks though, try this:
The “Sit Down on the Floor” Hack
When you get overwhelmed, literally sit on the floor for 30 seconds. It resets posture, pace, and ego all at once.
(As a casual disclaimer: I can’t personally vouch for its long-term effectiveness, seeing as I am about to turn 34 in a few weeks and it’s getting increasingly more difficult to stand back up. Once gravity takes me down, I am likely going to be down there for a while. But if you’re more sprightly than me and have two fully functional knees, give it a shot, and please report back as to its efficacy in your life.)
🎶 Music Therapy
Since Izzie’s long days in the NICU, music therapy has been a weekly staple in our home. Now she’s even big enough to carry the percussion line with an assortment of instruments!
That’s all you get for now! Come join us in house church sometime for a full set list!
Grateful you’re here with me in this process,
just dave
P.S.
In case you missed it, I was published in December as the cover story in CMDA Today!
👉 CLICK HERE to read or share the digital issue! LET ME KNOW if you would like a physical copy. 😊
DAVID SCOT MUSSER 