In my late 20s, I had my two boys and that perfectionism
still permeated many areas of my life. I wanted to be the perfect mother, wife,
housekeeper, friend, Christian, etc. When my second son came 24 months after my
first son, the perfectionist side of me I learned very quickly, was not going to
survive if I wanted to be a good wife, housekeeper, mother, Christian, etc. For
some reason, even with two babies and then toddlers, I thought the floors
should be clean enough to be able to practically eat off of them because the
kids were crawling around on the floor, dropping food and picking it up.
Deep down, although I did not realize it at the time,
perfectionism was stealing from me. I could never let my guard down because I had
to have everything “all together” 100% of the time if my family was going to “love
and accept me.” I felt if things got too messy or out of control that I was
letting my children or my husband down and I would be seen as a failure.
Praise God, he worked with me for several years to gradually
turn this mindset around to the fact that I did not have to be perfect in order
to be a good person, a worthy person or a great mom and wife! The kids would
still survive if the floor went unmopped for a day once in a while! Juggling
two small children and trying to be a Super mom, housekeeper, friend and wife
got to be a load I could no longer bear and when I got to that point, I had to
do some serious soul-searching to define what was truly important and the fact that
I could still be a good (or even great) person, mom, wife and friend even if I was
not perfect…but just by being ME, imperfections and all!
Friends, this is a lie that the enemy wants you to believe.
Maybe you, like me, were raised in a home where there was no love but severely
high expectations that you could never meet and your parents made you well
aware that you fell short. I pray that you did not have to go through years of
hardship to finally come to the realization that you do not have to be perfect
to be good or acceptable, either to others or to God.
Although the Lord worked patiently with me through my 20s
and into my early 30s with this and he was undoing the damage it did to me (constantly
striving but still feeling like I never achieved enough), my first real “wake
up call” came when my husband left me as a single parent of two small boys.
Even me in all of my “perfection” (or as hard as I tried to do everything just
so) was not good enough to keep a wandering husband faithful. Although the Lord
had done a lot of work in my life in that area, I still felt that if I had been
“pretty enough, thin enough, good enough, smart enough or charming enough,”
maybe he would have had eyes only for me instead of always trying to find
someone “cuter and better.”
I still remember clearly being on my living room floor right
after he left, and realized for the first time in my life that I did not have
it all together, I was far from perfect and that was OKAY. I knew from that
moment on, I would never again have the time or energy to try to keep up with
the “perfectionist game.” I was now entering “survival territory.” The
realization that I did not have to be perfect, my friends, is what truly set me
free! (Besides the freedom I had with my salvation)
I had a many-year history of self-hatred. Satan always
managed to tell me (sometimes through other people) how I would never be “good
enough.” As I got older and matured in my faith, however, and the more I heard
from God (who has often spoken to me very clearly), the more I realized that
who God made me to be was already grand, imperfections and all. There were
still areas I needed to improve on, (we all have areas where we need to change
and grow in), but I was never made to be perfect as long as I walk on this
earth. That is why we needed a perfect savior to die for our sins! Only Christ
walked this earth a perfect man, and nobody since him has managed to even come
close!
In fact, the more I began to evaluate my strengths and
weaknesses, I came to realize that a few of the areas I thought made me a bad
person were actually what made me a strong person, able to survive some
traumatic experiences throughout my life. Some of those things were actually
gifts and what I was made to believe was wrong with me were actually some of
the things that were right with me and made me uniquely grand.
Now that I had the realization that perfect did not equal
good enough and that I could still be good without being perfect, I was free to
grow exponentially in my faith, exactly where I was. I was much more
transparent with God about everything, and I mean everything! I no longer
feared that God would not accept or love me as I was because I was imperfect. I
wonder how many people end up not ever coming to Christ in the first place,
because deep down they have been told that they will never measure up unless
they are perfect? They have this belief that God will not accept or love them either
until they “clean up” first.
The fact is, God wants you exactly as you are…imperfections and
all. He will take those ashes, shape and mold them according to what is really
true, and do something beautiful with them. He will never say you are too far
gone to even bother with you or that you must be at a certain level of “perfection”
before he wants a relationship with you. He will mold and shape you into the
person he created you to be! He will use all the junk in your life and make
something beautiful out of it, if you only trust him and put him first.
Oh, how incredibly thankful I am that I do not have to be
perfect to be wanted, accepted or loved by God! He will do the “perfecting” in
my life that needs to be done. My part is to trust him, do his will and accept
his molding, shaping and pruning in my life of those things that need to go!
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