The not so perfect ME

It doesn’t matter what anyone says, there is no such thing as being perfect.  I wish I had realized that a long time ago.  No person or relationship will ever reach the epidemy of perfection. Social media has so many people fooled these days. You look at someone’s wall and immediately think, wow, that family has it all together; their perfect smiles, their perfect lives and their perfect house. But, looks can be deceiving.
As I began to process my healing, I realized over time, that the ME, the one who no one sees when I’m a hot mess, the one who cusses when I stub my toe against the couch and the one who probably takes a gazillion pictures before picking the one that my eye’s are not shut in, is the same person who is not perfect.
You see, I was that person who thought everything about me had to be perfect for people to love me. The more I tried, the more people seemed to find a reason to blame me for something or other. This happened pretty much my whole life. I tried and tried but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t get it just right. Not school, not my relationships, not work and not my marriage. After many years of suffering through verbal abuse (and this is actually a thing), I finally came to a place where I cried out for help.
God wasn’t the first person I cried out to, surprisingly. It was me. I took a long hard look at my life and finally had to ask myself.  Do I really want to be free from trying to be perfect or was I just complaining out loud because I like to hear myself talk?  We do that you know. We complain to others how we are mad at people or situations, but when it comes down to getting help, we don’t do it because complaining feels so much better.  
After finally asking myself that real question, if I truly wanted to be free, it still took me 1 year to give myself the answer I knew I needed.
 I needed help. Like seriously.
Not one person could tell me that it was going to be ok and someday I was going to be loved for being perfect.  That’s when I cried out to God. Only then, was He able to intervene and help me. I couldn’t blame people for not coming to my rescue. I couldn’t blame my family for not seeing how desperate I was, and I couldn’t even blame God because in all honesty, He was always waiting on me, not the other way around.
Its been 2 years that I’ve walked in the not so perfect me. Has it been easy? Yeah, no.  Its been really hard. As a matter of fact, sometimes I hated that things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to. I was mad that I had no control over certain situations and I was mad because I couldn’t change anything outside of me.
So, did I still have to deal with the whispers? Yeah, that never went away. I would be lying to say it will. You see, nothing changed from the outside.  From the outside, you will always have those who know better than you how you should do your life. So even after all this, I was still surrounded with that. So, what did change? 
 
ME. I changed. I broke out from that shell of condemnation, fear and having to do everything perfect for everyone, including myself and I just started to live my life doing me. Plain ole me. The one who still closes her eyes in pictures. The one who laughs at her own jokes. The one who talks with her hands, and the one who still makes mistakes and will continue to until the day I go home to be with Jesus.
But this time, I love where I’m at. I don’t let words or phrases hurt me. I don’t allow myself to have to get things right all the time, and in this process, I realized something so cool.
“I am the best ME that I am going to be.”
A beautiful young woman told me that once and I tucked that away in my heart and have lived it out every day since then.
You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to allow yourself to be human and grow and mature even if you fail in the process.  Failure doesn’t disqualify you from life, but it teaches you to become stronger. You learn to stand when you feel like you’re gonna fall.  You learn to love yourself in the middle of a crisis and you keep pushing even when you want to quit.
The next time you think you have to be perfect; look in the mirror and say, “you’re not going to get things right all the time, but you are strong, you’ve made it in spite of your failures, and you’ve never stopped being good enough for God.  

 Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
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~Broken Beautiful ​