“You are an amazing person.”
Do you believe that?
Let me confess something: I’ve been quite able to turn to the person next to me in at church or on the gymnasium bleachers — or right here on this blog — and tell you how truly amazing you are. And I’ve always meant it.
But sometimes? It’s really hard to believe that one word — amazing — about myself.
After spending the last year with thousands of women at conferences and retreats, I know you can totally relate.
You’ve told me how you feel like you’re not measuring up. How you’ve been burdened with the “not enoughs.” You see the ways you’re falling short when you look at your credit card balance, your dress size, your rejection letters, and the messy family stuff that you don’t want anyone to know about. You compare your insides, to the polished-up outsides of your Facebook friends. All the while your inner critic is yammering on about how you’re falling short.
And it all makes you feel quite un-amazing.
You know what we do when we feel un-amazing? We try harder. We do more. Because we think if we work harder, then we might finally be able to reach some unrealistic, invisible standard of what amazing looks like. We put in longer hours at the office, give more of ourselves to the committees, say yes to everything, and do our best to please everywhere.
The pressure for perfection is wearing us out.
But the answer isn’t “do more.” It’s not “try harder” or “work faster.”
The answer is believing that you are preapproved.
Living preapproved is the muzzle on your inner critic. It’s the permission slip you need to break out of the prison of perfectionism.
Do you know today how utterly cherished you are? Do you know that you are the apple of God’s eye? (Zechariah 2:8)
God is saying to you, “You are an amazing person.” He is saying, “You don’t have to earn anyone’s approval. You don’t have to try so hard. Rest in me. Believe again that My Son forfeited Heaven for you — to free you from guilt, from condemnation, from legalism, from living a try-hard life.” He freed you from the invisible standards of perfection that none of us can achieve.
It’s time to break up with perfection, and live preapproved. That’s the love and approval your heart has been searching for all along.
Will you join me and break up with perfection this Valentine’s Day?
Leave a Reply