If You're Feeling Like You Messed Up Again...

One of the things about perfectionism is that it sucks the life out of you.

It steals your joy.

It robs you of grace.

And the Joy of Lord is to be our strength.

So, if someone stole it, you're not going to be able to stand.

You can't stand against the struggles of life.

You can't endure enemy attacks.  But maybe the biggest enemy sometimes, is me.

I'm the one fighting to prove something.  Fighting to be perfect.

But somehow my foot gets into my mouth more than I'd like it to.

And I'd rather not chew toenails but this foot keeps finding mouth, and words better left unsaid come spewing.

And how do you grasp groping sentences from sifted starlight flowing, and how do you make sense of messes that are mostly your own making?

This weekend I've been wiping walls covered in smudges from small fingers.  Painting fresh color over all the dull of house and life and moaning.  Moaning about me.

And so joy has been eluding me these hours and making me moan and sigh the sigh of the wishing I could take back words.

And where do you go when things are a mess in your head, and you wish for tidy thoughts but all you find are cobwebs of words long spoken?

Grace.

This grace is changing everything.

After a day of moping and moaning about me, and how could I say that, and how could I?

I remember grace.

I remember that God's grace is there to cover my sins past, present, and future.

I remember that His grace covers me, not because I deserve it, because I never will, but only because He loves me.

I remember that I'm never really going to get it completely right on this side of heaven, but that when He looks at me, He only sees Perfect Love poured out on a bloody cross.

I remember that grace is right there waiting for me to bend the knees and receive.

And that repentance is always the way back to freedom and into this raging flow of grace.

This river of grace, I want to dive deep and never come up.

And Trust.

Trust Him that He is enough, to wipe away all the smudges on the wall of my life.

To make me perfect in Him, because I'll never be on my own.

I'll never be.

Oh, this is setting me free.

And He knows this, but He loves me anyway.

He loves, not because we're good enough, but because He knew we never would be.

And the more I see this grace that I don't deserve, the more I love Him back.

The more I want to please Him, not because I have to but because when someone loves you like this, how do you not swoon with lovesickness?

How can you help but scrawl love notes on your life for the world to see?

How do not want to give Him everything?

And His grace is changing me.

Making me fresh with colors all new, like the walls of this house.  Making me love, because He first loved me.

Filling me with the strength of Joy, of a life that is lost in Him.