Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Unapologetically Flawed

    It's your nose, isn't it? You've gazed at it sidewise in the mirror and wished it wasn't quite so hawkish. Or maybe it's your personality. You can't count the times you've longed to be more bubbly. Or maybe it's that you feel clumsy? You trip over your own feet and everyone else's, spill your coffee, and drop your keys. The screen of your phone is a perpetual spiderweb of cracks from all the times it's slipped from your grasp. 
    And don't even start on the lack of talents. Your dress patterns are always plain and straightforward, there's not an artistic bone in your body, and your words come out a jumbled mess of bad grammar. You've never been the athletic one. You can sing, but only soprano and only songs you know and only if you have a strong leader to follow. Now that you're thinking about it, you're a real mess, aren't you? Hopeless, pathetic, useless. Why did God create you like this? How can He use you in His Kingdom when you can't even wash the dishes without having to mop the floor?
    Perhaps you long for perfection. Perfect hair, perfect smile, perfect poise in every situation. 
    But perfect people only live in Paradise. 
    And this old world, though a nice enough place to live, is certainly not paradise.
    Oh, it was perfect in the beginning. And perfect people were created for that perfect world. But there was sin. Ugly sin. Sin that destroyed the perfection. Because of that sin, we can never hope to be perfect. We can never expect to reach a point of flawlessness like Adam and Eve the day they were created. But in spite of this knowledge, we still hope. We reach and grasp for the impossible dream of perfection, regardless of the futility of our actions.
    "You can be anyone!" we are told. But it's not so simple. Maybe you've tried it. Maybe you've found, like me, that you always feel you aren't quite good enough. You have to work double time to cover up all the things that don't go along with the persona you've tried to create for yourself. And at the end of the day? You still feel like a failure. The control over your life that you've worked so hard to create is just a slender thread away from spinning into wild disarray. And flaws covered up just aren't the same as no flaws at all.
    Are you ready for the truth? It's so simple you may not like to hear it. It sounds so easy. Like something your mom or your grandma always told you. And it's not perfect.
    The truth is that the only way we will ever attain perfection is to accept our imperfection. The only way we will reach a point of flawlessness is to accept that we are flawed. The only way we will ever quit apologizing for our lack of what we consider ideal characteristics is to live unapologetically as the person each of us was created to be.
    There, among the crumbled dreams of how we've wished to be we will stand in humility and submission before the God who created us. He will mend us, slowly it seems to those of us who are impatient, and make us whole. But even with His great loving hand putting us back together, we will not become the perfection we seem to think we need to be. No, we must accept living with scuffs and cracks and scars.
    And it is in acceptance we will find peace. Acceptance of our imperfections and our flaws. Unapologetically living a joyful life in spite of those things about ourselves we sometimes wish were different. "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6) We are promised He will continue working with us, continue sanding down our jagged edges, reshaping the clay of our vessels, smoothing over the cracked places with gentle hands.
    And someday, someday on that day of Jesus Christ, we shall walk on golden streets of Paradise with perfect, uncrippled feet. We will sing with voices clear and strong. We will know the right words, have the right smile, be creatures of light and joy. Someday we will gaze in awe at the shining perfect city created just for us by the One who created us, who knows our faults, who is able to save us from them. And we will finally abide in the perfection we have longed for with the Most Perfect One. Forever. Home.    

8 comments:

  1. Hey! I can comment as an anonymous person now! Yay! Sharon F

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  2. Beautiful thoughts! Thanks for sharing them.

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  3. Hey Nette, what, I can comment now!

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    Replies
    1. Yes! I found a setting to change that I did not know existed, so hopefully this will help everybody out! 😊

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