Last time I said that it is my mission to eliminate this whole idea that we are meant to strive for perfection. Let me explain how this all came about.
For the last several years, I have had a love-hate relationship with social media. Mostly hate, to be perfectly honest. I have never liked scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and seeing all of my friends and acquaintances posting about how “perfect” their lives were. Sure, to be perfectly honest, I was jealous. I felt like they were living amazing, fun, perfect lives, and I was sitting there in my sweats, no make-up on, eating a frozen dinner and watching Dateline re-runs. I was constantly reminded of everything I was NOT. I was not well put together. I was not going out and having fun with my friends all the time. I was not making as much money as they were. I was not in a relationship. I was not surrounded by twenty friends. I was not traveling the world. And on and on and on.
As I’ll tell you about soon enough, I’ve had my fair share of hard times. Most of my twenties was a dark valley, and seeing everyone else on social media made me feel even worse about myself than I already did. Luckily, I have turned my life around pretty significantly (only by the grace of God, I must add, and not at all by my own doing). However, even though I now am extremely happy and have a wonderful life that I do not nearly deserve, I still find myself comparing my life to everyone else’s on social media from time to time. Why do I do that??
I have done absolutely no research besides a quick google search, but I strongly believe that this practice of presenting our “perfect” lives on social media is, well, ruining our lives. Our kids are growing up online, and I’d go as far as to say that a large majority of their interactions are through social media. No wonder the rate of suicide is sky-rocketing. If I were a thirteen-year-old girl comparing myself to all of my other peers who were posting only their best, “perfect” pictures, I’d be depressed and suicidal and my self-esteem would be non-existent. Who can blame them? And honestly, it’s not much better for people in their twenties or thirties or even forties. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Obviously, the answer to that probably deserves a whole separate blog. But of course, the simple answer is, you guessed it, sin. Several sins, in fact. Pride and selfishness might be the two most obvious. We try to make ourselves look better because we want all the fame. We want all the attention. We want to feel better about ourselves by putting on a mask of perfection. We want to feel important. We want to have all the answers, and we want to appear smart because we have all the answers. The list goes on. In short, we want to be our own god. We want to be perfect, and we don’t want to rely on anyone but ourselves, including God or Jesus. I’m overgeneralizing here because I don’t want to write a whole book on this. You get the point.
So it might seem kind of hypocritical to be using social media when I just went on a tangent about how terrible social media is. And maybe that’s partially true. But I’m hoping that little by little, we can all let our guards down. Maybe we can all stop hiding behind the split seconds where we snapped the perfect picture, and start owning who we are the other 99.999% of the time.
Anyways, this has been something that has been weighing on me for years now. And that’s probably all it would have been – just thoughts in my head. But something happened to me not too long ago that sort of called me to action.
About two years ago, I was pregnant with my second son. I was folding laundry and praying to God, which is something I tend to do when my mind is left to wander. I was thinking about how I didn’t deserve to have a second child (or even a first child) and wondering why God would choose me to be a mother. I felt extremely unqualified, and I was feeling guilty because I felt like a failure of a mother to the son I already had. So I was praying that God would help me to be a better mother. I wanted to be a *perfect* mother. And I knew I was so far from perfect and that my only hope was to ask for God’s help. “God, please help me be a perfect mother,” I prayed. And then God spoke to me.
I’m going to stop here before I lose everyone due to my claim of God speaking to me. I promise I’m not crazy. And I promise I’m not exaggerating. I don’t go around saying that I hear God speaking to me on a regular basis. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have heard God speak to me. I’ve had plenty of times when I’ve “felt” like God was telling me something or when I’ve seen “signs” that may or may not be actual signs from God. That is not what I’m talking about here. I have only actually heard God speak to me 4 or 5 times. And it has never been an audible voice. The best I can explain it is like having a thought pop in my head that isn’t my own thought. It has always been very short and simple. And it has always been life-changing. You don’t have to believe me. That’s okay. But I truly believe it was God. Please know that I understand the weight of this claim, and I do not take it lightly. I am in no way trying to suggest that what God says to me should be applied to anyone else’s lives. You may be in a completely different situation, or God may be leading you down a completely different path. There is danger in taking things out of context or over generalizing. Please keep that in mind.
Okay back to my story.
God very clearly said to me, “I didn’t make you to be perfect.”
Seven words. Seven simple, ordinary, life-changing words.
These words changed my whole perspective on life. It seems to be common sense, yet the wording itself was something I’d never thought of before. This whole time I knew that I wasn’t perfect. I knew that I would never be perfect. But I had assumed my whole life that I was supposed to strive to be perfect. I thought the goal was to be a close to perfect as I could be, and that I needed to ask for God to help me because I couldn’t do it on my own. But here I was, piece of laundry in hand, hearing that perfect was never something I was meant to be. God doesn’t want me to be perfect. He didn’t create me for that purpose. In fact, those seven words taught me that God made me to be imperfect. And no, I’m not saying that God made me imperfectLY. He didn’t mess up when he created me. His work is always complete perfection. He perfectly made me imperfect.
But why? Why should I not strive to be perfect? Shouldn’t I do my best not to sin? Shouldn’t I try my hardest to be like Jesus? Yes. And no. You see, when we pretend to be perfect, we take Jesus out of the equation. Perfect people don’t sin, and therefore do not need a savior. And if we as Christians are walking around trying to be our own saviors, how will we lead anyone to Christ?
I know I’m repeating myself, but this is important. The only way we can lead others to Christ is by showing them that we need Jesus just as much as they do. We have to acknowledge our sins and our imperfections, and we have to point to the only one who can make us new. That person is Jesus.
Come back next time as I start telling you all my story. It’s messy. It’s broken. And it’s imperfect. Perfectly imperfect.
To God be ALL the Glory
Love, Grace