Grace is the New Perfect

I have spent my life achieving. Performing. Pursuing excellence. Striving to be the best. I have spent more effort than I care to admit trying to force my life into neatly arranged drawers. I have idolized a squeaky clean image and perfection.

I have lived to people please. I have counted on those around me to validate my worth. Parents. Teachers. Bosses. Friends. Strangers. More than anything, I have wanted to matter. I have wanted to do life the right way. I have wanted the A on my report card, the "atta girl," the applause because it made me feel wanted, and worthy.

And it is exhausting. It is too big a burden for these tired shoulders to carry. Working from a place of need in a society where the standard is always changing is so draining. Working from a place of need in my mind where the expectations are higher and higher is depressing. 

I could manage for a while, when life was simple and one-dimensional. When achieving an acceptable level of "perfection" meant only making the Dean's list and keeping my dorm room immaculate and doing my hair. But I was bound to stumble when the weights got heavy enough. When perfection grew into managing a household, and not only having, but also raising children, and thriving in a healthy marriage, and running a business, and somehow staying physically fit and sexually appealing, and never letting them see me sweat. 

The weight was ... is crushing.

There have been breakdowns. Multiple. Breakdowns. Resolutions to try harder. Be more organized. Find out how she's doing it. Fake it until you make it. Control. Strive. Pull it together for crying out loud.

It is all a mirage in the desert. It is a beautifully decorated hamster wheel. It is "chasing after the wind." It is tiring, and energy-depleting and joy-killing and burdensome. It is weight, friends. Weight of the heaviest, self-imposed kind. And I didn't see it until my knees buckled and my ankles caved and it crushed my shoulders and I found myself on the ground, drowning in my own expectations. 

I have lived here. For how long, I'm not sure. Days? Weeks? Months? Years. 

I have been spinning, striving, working, proving.

I started this blog to convince myself that being real was the antidote to my dilemma. Shatter the perception of perfect. Find joy in the mess. Go counter-cultural. Expose the lie of perfectionism for the sham it is. But that too is chasing after the wind. "Imperfections are beautiful," is just another mantra, another expectation, more striving to make the chaotic, the ugly, the flawed meaningful and purposeful. Above my pay grade, truly.

But grace. I keep coming back to drink at this fountain. Life-freeing, expectation-shattering grace. Nothing has the power to loose and free like grace. I'm not talking about my own grace. I can give myself as much grace as I want and so what? When I give myself grace, I find myself on the couch with a pint of ice cream sitting on a pile of laundry and binge watching Parenthood. At the end of the day, my own grace leaves me uninspired and mostly unproductive. I cannot be the source of my own grace. 

But God's grace. To know that I am so broken and so messed up and so imperfect and yet, He decidedly loves me. So much so that He sent Jesus to die to save me. Redeem me. To free me from the hamster wheel. To take the burdens off my shoulders. To do what I want so much for myself but could never do. To arrange the messy parts of my life neatly in the drawers. To carry the heavy, crushing weight of being all and doing all for me. To free me from striving and trying so hard. 

No, real is not the new perfect folks. Not by any means. Real is just what it is. Lipstick on a pig. The ugly truth that we are all broken and incapable and just doing our best to cover up the ugly.  If perfectionism says life is unicorns and rainbows, real says life is cigarette butts and cups of coffee. So what? At the end of the day, we're still left with the ugly and imperfect. Different picture, same problem.

Enter God's grace.

God's grace sees discarded cigarette butts and redeems them. Builds them into something the world could have never imagined. Makes them useful. Gives them value. He frees cigarette butts from their identity of addiction and enables them to be what they could never be on their own.

Perfectionism is my addiction. Trying so hard. Too hard. You have one too. 

Enter God's grace.

Only God can love and reform such hopeless addicts. Only God can take our ugly, and not just cover it up, but truly redeem it and give us worth apart from itself. Only the work of Jesus on the cross can love us despite who and what we are - sinners flailing in the deep water in need of rescuing.  In the words of Tim Keller, “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

This is grace. This is life-freeing, expectation-shattering grace. 

This, I'm learning, is the new perfect. 

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of [perfectionism, achieving, trying so hard, performing, striving, _________________] slavery." Galatians 5:1-3

I Forgot this Part: On Postpartum Depression

I ugly cried in bed last night for the first time in a long time. My husband lay inches away from my face studying me while I buried my face in my hands.

"What's wrong?" he asked gently.

"I think I need help," I said matter of factly. And then, as if on cue, the tears came and would not stop.

I'd been doing ok managing life with a new baby, or so I thought. But over time, the feelings of anxiety and depression I knew well from my first pregnancy have resurfaced. It's all there: the nagging restlessness, the constant anxiety over things I know aren't that important (unfinished laundry, doing the dishes, ruining my son's birthday cake!) and most of all the looming sadness. It was the subtle progression that surprised me this time. I keenly remembering "bragging" to one of my girlfriends at two months postpartum: "No baby blues this time around! I feel a lot more like myself!"

A bit premature perhaps. I haven't felt like myself since.

I went to see what I thought was a therapist recommended by my insurance company. She turned out to be a psychiatrist (not kidding) and after not-even a 10-minute assessment that made me feel more specimen than human, she diagnosed me bluntly: "You're definitely a candidate for medication. There are a few I can prescribe you." Then she scribbled feverishly on a notepad and handed me a form to sign over my medical records. 

"But I'm nursing ..." I heard myself say, shocked.

"There's one that is safe for the baby," she assured me, and continued scribbling. I politely declined and returned the medical form before practically running out of her office and to my car where I ugly cried with my face buried in the steering wheel.

Life right now is overwhelming. The days are long and the work is difficult in a way that is difficult to describe to my friends without kids. Everything feels forced and unnecessarily hard ... getting out of bed, sending emails, dropping my son off at school. I want so badly to fix myself except I don't know exactly what I need.

But I have this comfort as I battle raging hormones, mood changes and the thick of mothering young children: God sees and He cares. I know from His Word that He is "near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18)." I know too that "His power is made perfect in my weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9)." And I know that "this light momentary affliction is preparing for [me] an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17)."

That's the duality of living in the present while also knowing the truth. I am depressed today. That's a fact. I feel like crap and I mostly want to go back to bed. Forever. But the other reality (#alternativefacts) is that God:

• Knows all about depression because He battled His own griefs and sorrows on earth (Isaiah 53:3)
• Is with me in the hard times and isn't going anywhere (Matthew 28:20)
• Records the tears of my every ugly cry  (Psalm 56:8)

It doesn't change my reality, true ... but it does change my perspective. Even though I forgot about this part - the ugly crying and the emotional roller coaster and the constant state of exhaustion - it's no surprise to Him. He sees and He cares. He understands when I have a mild panic attack over the piles and piles of laundry hiding in our guest room. He hears my sentence prayers for bedtime to come quickly and gives me strength and courage to seek the help I need. I'm not saying that won't eventually include an anti-depressant or therapy or something else I haven't thought of because it might. What I am saying, is that I'm not just going to be ok, I am ok. 

Thank God for that.