When my day starts like this (which is most days), I feel fail-proof. My day will go just perfect if I can follow this schedule and get everything done. When I lay down that night, knowing that everything will be marked through, that makes my heart happy!
I know, Type A to the max. Some of you may have no idea what this looks like and think I'm crazy. Others of you relate so well, don't you!?
Well, last week was one of those weeks where every day my day was planned perfectly. Every day did not end perfectly. My list and schedule were not marked through at the end of the day perfectly. Things came up, things didn't get done. I was frustrated. I was annoyed. I was stressed. I was defeated.
When I don't get things done that I had written down, I feel like I failed. Big time. I think that everyone around me expects me to get everything done. Expects me to have a clean house. To cook and bake homemade goodies. To wear make-up and have my hair done. To have time to workout. To be in a zillion organizations. To be successful at school. To be happy all the time.
Do you feel like that ever? Feel like you just have to be a perfect Christian girl? It's hard. It's impossible to do. But yet, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be this way. Why? I don't know.
Maybe it's from growing up in church and seeing all the older ladies or our own moms. We watched them have a clean house, cook dinner every night, volunteer at the church, be there for everyone. And what we saw was that they did it all perfectly with grace.
I realized this week that God wanted my attention. He definitely got it. I felt so defeated. So not perfect. I realized that all my attention, all my work, everything I did was due to the fact that someone was watching me do it, I knew something was wrong. I was in need of saving from this huge bubble of pride surrounding me. I knew that God was faithful. I knew that everything I did was because of His grace. I knew that He has redeemed me. But living that way is hard. Knowing how to live as free, in His grace, redeemed, is hard.
Praying for my Father to rescue me from my defeat and pride of living in a way that satisfies others, that's a daily prayer for me now. Tears flowed when I realized that I'm captive to living in a way that bases all my success and joy on how others are satisfied by me or see me as successful. How that must hurt my Father's heart when He already rescued me.
After days of praying, being convicted of this and crying out to God for help, you do get tired. I was getting more frustrated that I wasn't fixing this problem now; that God wasn't making me joyful or satisfying my heart immediately. I had pain. I wanted healing after my prayer ended. Right then. I think I expected my heart to be overwhelmed with joy and satisfaction in the Lord immediately. But sometimes our Father doesn't work like that. He didn't do that for me.
I knew God was faithful. I've seen His faithfulness before and knew what that feels like. I knew my heart could be completely satisfied in Him; it has been before. I knew all these things. I just didn't know why my heart didn't feel different.
God works in so many ways, and it isn't my place to tell Him how I want Him to work in my life. Really, that's crazy. Me telling the Creator of the universe how I want Him to work because obviously I know what's best.... But slowly, my Father sweetly brought me back to Him.
He is showing me that my perfect life isn't perfect. Only He is perfect. That getting my satisfaction and joy from the way others view me or doing things out of pride because I think that's the way people should see me, is hard to let go of and let Him be the giver of joy and the satisfier.
This journey is a hard one. But God is beautiful. He is gracious. And glory to His name for that because He knows I'll need lots of it through the process!
I heard this song and loooove the lyrics! Listen to the words. Our God is our savior!! He is right there when we call out to Him! He hears us! He is so great!
