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If you look around, you'll find instruction manuals for everything, tips for how to do anything, and the key to all successes.

They tend to look like this:
"How to stay organized"
Do these 50 things to a happy life...
10 steps to a better you:
20 exercises to the perfect body!

All of that sounds exhausting! Putting my life into a box. Following checklist after checklist feels like a daunting and impossible task. Defining perfection by the standards I see on Facebook and Pinterest. I ask you, what happens when I've done ALL of these tasks and yet...and yet I still have chaos in my life, I sometimes feel sad, I'm not always my best me, and I still have a little extra 'me' to love? What happens when I've checked EVERYTHING off the list and there's still something not right?!

I'm defeated.

I too often get caught up in my lacking. Wasting away in the "but they's, should have's, could have's, and if only's"

Where is the freedom in that?

But "Christ has set us free"

In Psalm 139 we are told of our intricate being. Each of us knit together individually; uniquely. We are created wonderfully, without blemish. I find comfort in knowing I was made as I am. What can be looked at as my shortcomings, failures, and blemishes are part of my who I am created as.

I am imperfect - which is His perfection.

If I take the time and effort, because I know full-well it doesn't come naturally, to recognize my "weakness" as my strength, I may get a glimpse of freedom.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ESV)

Your Father created you as His jar of clay; His imperfect vessel. When you are connected to the vine, your weakness is a testimony to God's grace and power.

I pray that I (that we) rest in this. I pray that when Satan tempts my heart to compare myself to others and lays the feeling of defeat over me, that I find rest in knowing I am created, chosen, and loved beyond measure. You are too.

-bestillandsmile