{Editor’s Note: I almost didn’t write this, because I am afraid it will come across as passive-aggressive compliment fishing … but then I read this, about a new kind of pretty, and I wanted to tell you how I am really feeling. And how I am really dealing with it. And how I have to deliberately lay my burden down every day … and how, too often, I don’t. And how I can’t be the only one who feels like this.} 

In my thirty three years I’ve collected labels like handmade christmas ornaments … {also something I actually collect}. They are tattered scraps tagged with pieces of me. Each one hung haphazardly across my person, wisps of my story.

Daughter. Sister. Friend. Wife. Mother {and the infinite subtitles under this one …}. Pilot. Seamstress. Athlete. Writer. Chief Cook and Bottle Washer. Outgoing. Relational. Never-Shuts-Up-Doesn’t-Take-A-Breath Talkative.

Today {most days lately} …. I’m sure I’m not doing a single one well. {Except for Pilot, and that’s just because the only machine I pilot these days besides the dishwasher is a Honda Accord bursting with sour milk, cheerios, broken crayons, withered food remnants, a gajillion coloring pages, and fast food wrappers. Don’t judge.}

Beloved, I am weary and I am discouraged.

Then, I read this …

“That perfection that you want, it will be the pin through you, right to the wall, right to the ground, and you’ll never know more … Perfectionism is the prison that will bar you from unfolding into the wide open full life and release. And for all your work, you will flail and you will thrash and you will exhaust, and a cold wind will still blow straight down the nape of your neck”  {Ann Voskamp}.

And then, I read this …

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” {Matthew 11:28-30}. 

I weep with relief. His Word a balm for my weary soul. There is rest, respite in surrendering the perfection {an elusive, impossible goal to begin with …}.

And there is grace in the surrendering. Grace for the surrendering.

~M.