I’m a little afraid of what you might think. I’m afraid you won’t like my hair or the way I dress or the fact that I sometimes snort when I laugh. What if you don’t like my words or the way I express myself? I’m afraid you won’t like the way I can sometimes be sassy and blunt and sarcastic.

Actually, I’m a lot afraid, or at least I was until God showed up and revealed that your opinions were more important to me than his. I’ve been trying to live up to perfect and I’ve found that perfection is a hard task master whom I can never ever please.

So. Perfection? I’m breaking up with you.

Perfection, you’ve used my fear of rejection to sway me into a relationship with you.  It’s impossible to please you, and my heart has been twisted until it has little resemblance to my truest self. I keep breaking up with you because ours is a toxic relationship, but we get back together because you woo me with flattery and deceive me into thinking that you are the reason I’m accepted.  You use my fear of rejection against me, but perfection? I have a message for you:

Being perfect cripples and shames because perfection is impossible to attain and shame’s cousin is fear, which pulls me in tight and won’t let me go.

So I raise the white flag of surrender, not to my fears, but to my God. I bring my fears and shame to him and lay it at His feet because fear and shame keep me from receiving and being perfected in His love.

His perfect love means He is the one I fear, He is the one I please, and He is the one who holds me close when my world falls apart. So perfection? You and I are breaking up for good because His love is the key to overcoming my fear, not a relationship with you.  Sincerely, me. 

Breaking up with a habit, attitude or train of thought requires diligence in order not to re-form an alliance with that thing that holds us back from moving forward in our relationship with God. The ‘thing’ that cripples and stunts our growth is going to be different for each of us. It could be: jealously, religion, an inaccurate view of God, negative thinking or a lack of thanksgiving, but what if we stopped the crazy cycle and embraced the crazy, unfathomable love God has for us as individuals where our fears are gone and our perfection has nothing to do with us, but everything to do with his love. What if we let his love drive out our fears and submit to being perfected in his love?

Being perfected in His love is coming to a fuller, richer, and greater understanding of his love for us.  Perfection is this: to live so securely in His love that the crap of life doesn’t change our security in his love.

I’ve broken up with perfection and in its place is a brokenness which only God can fill, but it’s through the brokenness that I come to a fuller realization of this amazing grace that flows down and in and around and through me so that I only breathe in His love and breathe out His grace onto my brokenness and onto yours.

We’re all a broken mess and it’s only through God’s grace that we can break up with the toxic behaviors in our lives and be filled with his spirit so that we can run in the freedom he sets before us. 

A freedom to live securely in his love.

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18 (NIV)

“I hold fast to your statutes, O Lord; do not let me be put to shame. I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:31-32 (NIV)