You’ve got to be careful when you pick a word for the year. I knew this going in. And I knew my word IMPERFECT was going to be a daunting word in some ways. Daunting in the sense that it requires me to swallow pride and admit defeat, to admit I am not the woman who has it all together, no matter how badly I long to…and I do long for it so badly.
So at the end of a week of the flu bug, fillings (I don’t like visiting the dentist) and the flurry of Easter activity that comes when your husband works at a church, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Feeling pretty much like my life was not at all where I thought it should be. Feeling, well, IMPERFECT.
Easter morning comes. From my home I visit a LifeChurch online church experience. As the words to the worship songs ring out, I feel this hardened layer over my heart starting to crumble away. I’m trying to stubbornly keep up my guard, but it’s not working.
Joel Limpic is leading worship. (There are Easter experiences all this week if you want to check it out!) He sings this phrase, “Our hearts will find no rest until they find their rest in you.”
That’s it. That’s the words my heart needed. My heart of stone can’t survive in God’s presence. I can’t stay sorry for myself. It all starts to melt.
“My heart will find no rest until it finds its rest in You.”
You see, in my life, ever so slowly, I take these steps that ease me away from God. I start to glance in other directions, flirting with different idols. They’re just glances at first. Just subtle agreements that I need X,Y or Z to make my life perfect. Oh why is my life so IMPERFECT? I want perfect. And I start thinking I’ll find it elsewhere.
God has been revealing to me how deep the rabbit-hole really goes when it comes to my comparing myself to others. It is deep, friends. Much deeper than I even realized. And with that comes this need to prove myself. And with that comes hurry, stress, and spew. I don’t know how else to describe it, but “spew.” “Spew” is the garbage that clutters up my mind from thinking clearly. “Spew” is the wasted energy that’s burned over nothing in effort to be somebody. “Spew” is the constant need to have approval from and keep up with the lives of countless other women.
And what does it come down to?
“My heart will find no rest until it finds its rest in You.”
I think He is asking me to give more stuff up. Right now, I think I have to stop reading blogs. I don’t know for how long. I don’t know that the idea is a good one. In fact, I can think of plenty of reasons why it’s a bad idea. But my heart knows He is asking me to do this.
I read blogs to escape, to escape what I need to be doing. And to escape who I need to be. It seems much easier to just try and do what some other women are already doing. Let me try and be her or her or her. Then my life won’t be so darn IMPERFECT. So I chase down other people’s dreams and try to paste them onto me. They don’t fit me though. Only God knows the perfect fit for me, and I have got to make Him my One before I’m going to figure this whole thing out. I am not healthy enough to read other women’s blogs right now. I just add all of their accomplishments as to-dos on my own list. And I can’t take the weight it’s all putting on my shoulders. I think God can heal me of this, but only when I’ve learned to rest in Him first.
Welcome to 2009, my year of IMPERFECTion.
Has God ever asked you to give something up that felt silly at the time? How have you seen it effect you?
Is it hard for your heart to be at rest in Him?
Am I completely crazy? I feel crazy {as I go to Bloglines and unsubscribe from all my RSS feeds because I know if I don’t delete them I’ll still check them.}
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I hope you can find blogs to be inspiring again soon! But I know how it is when you just want to be able to make all those cute things soule mama seems to be able to do, etc. I have decided to not worry about the things she is doing, but be inspired that she finds the positive in her everyday life of living with kids. But, of course, it’s not always easy or possible to do and a good dose of no blog reading can be a very good idea indeed. I have been asked by the universe to give up my ENTIRE life as I know it. When I had this baby I was a web designer, an artist, and activist and a community oriented person who did LOTS of things. Now I can’t leave the house after 6pm so I miss everything I used to do. There are naps, feedings, playtimes, etc. during the day–All on a rigid schedule since this guy is extremely fussy if he gets tired or deviates from the expected routine. No more long conversations at cafes, no more evening concerts or spur of the moment trips or events. BUT, the new life I have has caused me to learn to live in the moment, which I have never really had to do. I have let go of things I loved doing and being, to embrace the LOVE I have with this baby. He is truly a beautiful little guy and to watch another person come into being is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. My life NOW, provided I can remember what is happening, is full of amazing moments. Breathing has become a very helpful thing: constant inbreath and outbreath, expansion and contraction, imperfection, and then perfection. You are not crazy.
Oh, Mandy, once again I’m so there with you. We have a really neat MOPS meeting planned in two weeks where we are “taking off the masks” and revealing the “real” us…this is what I’m putting on my cardboard testimony. For a little while after we got into Angry Homemade Noodles and we talked about this whole comparing thing, I thought I was over it. But as you said, it starts with just a glance…and then I’m deep in it again. I gave up my MOPS steering team position partly for this reason. Not only will I have more free time, but I believe God is calling me to find my worth in Him…to keep my eyes on Him…not to be so tangled in what I can do, who I will impress doing it, and how it will make look compared to other moms around me. It has been hard. I love being on this team. I have a great group of really strong Christian women I work with who are passionate about serving God and meeting real emotional, physical, and spiritual needs of moms. At this point, I’m hoping to go back in a year. I need the time to train myself to keep my eyes on God…to train myself to make Him my motivation for all that I do…not anyone or anything else…just Him.
I’m totally with you on the blog thing. There have been several times where I’ve come across blogs that I’ve wanted to add to my read list and have had to force myself not to. Some I’ve added, and then I’ve realized what it’s doing to my thought processes and I’ve removed it. I just read a devotional this morning about camping myself on the edge of sin, and as I read your post, I’m realizing that I’m doing that very thing as read other’s blogs. Sure comparing myself to others is not the worst thing in the world, but when it makes me feel inadequate and doubt that the Lord created me exactly as He saw fit, and I continue to tell myself He should have made me more like “so-and-so”…I’m sinning. I can never be all that God wants me to be when I’m distracted by trying to be like other women.
Okay, sorry…mini-sermon to myself and the beginnings of a blog post you won’t have to go to my blog to read :O).
You had a post a while back about creating being a gift, and it was partly inspirational in me starting a blog that was going to be for me and writing, different than my family blog where I update people on life in my family. Now, this post is inspiring me to delete that blog! I haven’t written anything yet anyway.
I hope I’m not comparing, just letting God speak to me. He’s been telling me to be content with what He has given me right now. I’ve been trying to add more to be content. I must find rest in Him. It is hard. We are so used to being “doers” not “resters.” How *funny* (as in God working and trying to get through my think skull!) that I was just reading about resting in God last night. Check out Psalm 84. Thanks Mandy!
Hmmm this is a really hard one. It goes back to that same old topic about “not being enough”; “not being good enough”: “not being happy in your own skin”. Reading other women’s blogs (especially arty/crafty ones) is hard for me in as much as I start comparing myself to them. And then, fatally, I start putting myself down and being hard on myself thinking how I’m not “good enough”. Not talented enough. Not creative enough. So I do recognise the difficulty you struggle with too. I think it’s about balance. There’s some amazing blogs “out there”. Inspirational. And we need to be able to read them without condemnation. The other issue for me is procrastination. I read blogs often just to put off my “to do” list for that moment or day! Ugh! I’m a terrible procrastinator.
This has struck a chord in me. I have to think about it some more and pray about where it will lead me. x
hey mandy,
great thoughts… thanks for your deep honesty. so glad that God seemed to speak some things through the set!! the line from that song actually comes from augustine who said:
“Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts find no rest until they rest in you!”
it’s a beautiful thought, isn’t it? our restlessness finds rest in God because we were made for him.
all the best to you this sunday,
joel
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