Hi My Name is Becky, and I am a...

PERFECTIONIST!

    You'd never know it from my often messy house, the fact that I NEVER wear foundation, and that my children and I are mostly dressed in jeans with holes, sweatpants, or mismatched clothes, but I am sick with the disease of perfectionism.

    Perfectionism is just one reason that I talk myself out of things, doubt myself or even listen to the whisper of the enemy, "It's not good enough…you're not good enough."  I do this when I get dressed, when I exercise, when I decorate my house, when I write this blog (no posts between October and February?  Not too busy, just too nit-picky), when I serve in my church body, etc. etc.  This bad habit of perfectionism sneaks up on me and renders me paralyzed with indecision and procrastination.  I let projects pile up because I just can't decide how I want to finish them, or sometimes even begin them.  Scrapbooking, decorating my bedroom, cleaning out a closet,  preparing a song for special music on Sunday, I could go on...

    And why? Why on earth do I care so much?  Because I'm afraid.  Because I want to please people. I want people to think I've got it all together, that I am really smart, pretty cute, and that I have talents as a fill-in-the-blank.  (Musician, writer, parent, cook, wife, decorator, gardener, etc.)

       I've been convicted lately, while reading in Genesis and Exodus, about this habit of mine, to want circumstances to be perfect before I act.  I'm reading through the Bible this year, gosh darn it.  I'm behind, but I will do it!  I notice as I read through the Word that from the beginning, people are just flawed.  I was laughing with a friend of mine earlier this week about philosophies that declare people to be primarily good inside.  People aren't!  I know I'm not.  I haven't broken any major laws, but I'm still selfish, rude and mean.  Just ask my husband about sleeping Becky, who haveth no filters.  But besides just knowing myself, I look to the Bible, because surely there must be a verse in there that says God only uses perfect people, right?  Oh wait, they are sinful from Genesis to Revelation.

     I look at God's people, the Isrealites and their tribes, and I trace their roots to Jacob's 12 sons.  Most people know that the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, but this is only the beginning of these mens' sins.  Reading their stories is like reading a horribly violent soap opera.

•      A family with four mothers in it, all vying for favor from the husband. They lie, they manipulate, they steal, they bribe, they avenge and kill.  
• Reuben committed incest to try to affirm his right as firstborn.  
• Levi & Simeon plot horribly to avenge their sister Dinah,  and kill an entire clan of men who were trying to do the right thing.  
• Judah not only suggested selling his brother into slavery, but also married a Canaanite woman who completely turned his sons against God; two out of three of the sons were so evil, God struck them dead.  Then Judah abandoned his daughter-in-law until he thought she was a prostitute, and fathered two sons by her.  Then when he found out she was pregnant, he wanted HER burned because of her adultery, as she was supposed to be faithful to his youngest son, who he never intended she actually marry.  (Wait, in that last run-on sentence, did you get confused because of the craziness? Too bad, I'm working on defeating perfectionism and I'm not going to clarify. Read it for yourself in Genesis 38.)   

   These are just four of the twelve brothers!  This is just so bizarre, because these are the sons of the man actually named Israel.  If you don't believe me, read the last 15 chapters of Genesis.  So what on earth is God up to? Why didn't He just abandon this crazy family, and start over?
     
      Reading their sinful beginnings is just half the story.  When I turn to the book of Joshua, and read about God giving the descendants of these men the different portions of the Promised Land of Canaan, I just marvel at this God I serve.  I think about the big genetic picture, and realize how God chose these people. How God redeemed them.  How God saved them and used them, even in the genealogy of his own Son's adoptive father.  Over and over, the Bible paints pictures of people stuck in their mistakes, and in pits of sin, only to have their God pursues them relentlessly and save them from their folly.

   And so, I have to quit believing the lie that God cannot use me unless I first become perfect, or good enough.  I have to write the blog post, and just let God use it, and maybe not proofread it four hundred thousand times.  Find some typos? Good! I'm making progress.

    I have to pick some art and hang it on the walls of my home, and let my husband get out the level and the tape measure, because being precise and making things straight are his gifts, not mine.  I have to  SHARE MY FAITH!!! and not worry that my story isn't good enough, or doesn't follow the usual formula, or doesn't point to God the way that someone else's story does.  What if they think I'm delusional? What if they explain it away?  What if they don't believe, and come to Jesus after hearing the story of how he's worked in my life?  So what? God says. Don't worry about what YOU can do, because I am already moving and working in a much bigger picture than you can see right now.

    What about you?   What have you been telling yourself you're not good enough for? (Did you see that? I just ended a sentence in a preposition, and I'm NOT going to change it.)
What have you heard lately that you can't do well enough?  Throw your hands up with me and praise a God who uses imperfect people; and while those hands are up we can wave them victoriously at our enemies, even if those enemies are our own defeating minds, and say - we're going to act anyway.  We're going to sing anyway.  Share our testimony anyway.  Invite that friend to church anyway, even if they might not like the music or message or the way I sing when I'm standing next to them.  Because if God can use Reuben and Judah and Tamar and David and Peter and Paul, then He can use me too.

Praise you Father, light a fire in imperfect me.