“Shannon Evans’ tender and honest book reminds us all to put first things recognizably first. Find in this book a way to return to a loving way of life, exquisite mutuality, and a renewed sense of service that allows us to be reached by the poor. This book helps you … to be in the world who God is.”
— Father Greg Boyle, SJ, founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention program in the world, and author of Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir
“I believe that the Body of Christ in the twenty-first century is very unhealthy. We are limping in our walk toward eternity. In order for us to be healed, we need to draw close to Jesus in the sacraments and the Body of Christ in the poor, marginalized, and oppressed people of our world. Embracing Weakness provides a model through Shannon Evans’s testimony on how we can continually receive and share the healing power of Jesus Christ in our walk toward eternity.”
— Father Joshua Johnson, author of Broken and Blessed, podcast host of Ask Fr. Josh, and pastor of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church
“Embracing Weakness is truly transformative. For anyone who has ever hesitated to show weakness — and isn’t that all of us, really? — Shannon Evans demonstrates the spiritual freedom that comes from being vulnerable. Even better, she shows how this vulnerability will transform not just ourselves, but our families, our communities, our Church, and the world. Evans is the real deal, a seeker who doesn’t hesitate to share her own mistakes as well as the graces she’s encountered along the way. This book pulses with wisdom, authenticity, and heart.”
— Ginny Kubitz Moyer, author of Taste & See: Experiencing the Goodness of God with Our Five Senses
“‘We have spent decades crafting our very existence around strength and success, yet the upside down kingdom blatantly refuses to play by the game we know best.’ Shannon has packed beautiful and hard truths in these pages that have ripped me open, encouraged, and challenged me all at once. She has exquisitely woven story with teaching all wrapped in the humility of a seeker of justice and love. I will be returning to this text often in my own walk toward solidarity and incarnation.”
— Ike Ndolo, songwriter and recording artist
“At a time when faith and power strain to weave themselves into one smooth garment, Embracing Weakness offers a humble, terrifying alternative: It is in the decay of self-pride that true abundance takes root. Melding vulnerable storytelling and a persistent return to Scripture, Evans’ deft prose is a reminder that authentic ministry begins at our frayed ends. I wish I could put this book in the hands of every church leader, every wide-eyed revolutionary, and every ordinary neighbor.”
— Shannan Martin, author of The Ministry of Ordinary Places and Falling Free
“Through powerful words, prophetic witness, and the paradox of vulnerability, Embracing Weakness invites us to examine our own lives as we wrestle with life’s biggest questions and faith’s deepest mysteries. Weaving together stories from her marriage, parenting, and ministry, Shannon Evans celebrates the beauty born from brokenness and the hope found in humility, beckoning us gently into conversion as she shares her own. Encountering God in the least likely places and faces, Shannon shows us how to embrace an incarnational faith in the mess and muck of everyday life. For anyone who’s secretly wondered, ‘Am I the only one?’ or struggled to find God when everything falls apart, Shannon assures us we aren’t alone. Embracing Weakness is a story of faith transformed and questions lived — a story for all of us.”
— Laura Kelly Fanucci, author of Living Your Discipleship: 7 Ways to Express Your Deepest Calling and Grieving Together: A Couple’s Journey through Miscarriage
“Provocative and challenging. Embracing Weakness is a strikingly honest story about the struggle to live a more real and incarnational following of Jesus — being poor with the poor One. This book is a timely invitation to shed the masks of a ‘clean-cut’ Christian life. In allowing Jesus to enter into the mess of our own lives, we receive grace and courage to enter the mess of the world with Him. A beautiful and radical journey of ongoing conversion.”
— Father Emmanuel Mansford, Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, New York City
“Reader, be prepared to journey with Shannon Evans into ‘the best of times and the worst of times.’ Originally, she had a fixed image of herself, a fixed universe she would help save, a fixed faith that she would practice, and a fixed God who would save her. As life unfolds and she unravels, she matures in faith and her expectations of life. She grows in ways she did not expect; chief of these is growing to understand how her weaknesses can be secret sources of newfound strength. Jesus and his life are the examples she falls back on to solidify this new perspective on life. All the ‘opposites’ she had imagined before, now complement her life and ministry. She realizes that our weaknesses link us together. They are a natural bonding agent that builds intimacy between peoples. Her original desire was an illusion and when the veil was removed, she had to learn to live with the reality of the rubble that looked her straight in the eye. Moreover, to her credit, and to the gift of faith, from all this, she rises to new life. She even finds redemption in the rubble!”
— Sister Jo-Ann Iannotti, OP, poet, photographer, author of Remember, Return, Rejoice: Journeying from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday
“With humility and authenticity, Shannon gently galvanizes us to embrace our weaknesses as well as our neighbors, revealing how doing one is really the work of the other. This book is a merciful and powerful invitation to become fully human, giving us all permission to embrace our tender spots so we may get on with the mission of changing the world.”
— Kayla Craig and Lindsy Wallace, founders and co-hosts, Upside Down Podcast
Embracing Weakness
The Unlikely Secret to Changing the World
Shannon K. Evans
Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
Huntington, Indiana 46750
Except where noted, the Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible — Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 1965, 1966, 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Quotations from papal and other Vatican-generated documents available on vatican. va are copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permissions as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.
Copyright © 2019 by Shannon K. Evans. Published 2019.
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All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission from the publisher. For more information, visit: www.osv.com/permissions.
Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
200 Noll Plaza
Huntington, IN 46750
1-800-348-2440
ISBN: 978-1-68192-266-9 (Inventory No. T1957)