I’m Lisa, and I have five wonderful things to share with you:
#1 – I’m not perfect
#2 – You’re not perfect
#3 – God knows you’re not perfect
#4 – God doesn’t expect you to be perfect
#5 – When you embrace your imperfect self, you can live your life more fully and freely than you ever have before!
I used to think that one day I would become a perfect Christian woman, like the women leaders I would see at church.
There was one in particular whose voice was soft like butter. Every time she went up to pray or give announcements I saw a halo above her head. To me, she was the epitome of a perfect Christian woman. She/Her and the Proverbs 31 woman.
It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be like them. I wanted to please God; I wanted to be who and what God wanted me to be. And to me those ladies were the epitome of a perfect Christian woman.
Things were going well. I was growing spiritually. I was serving God. I was becoming a Perfect Christian Woman. And by the time I met my husband, I was one.
But it’s pretty easy to be perfect when you’re single. You wake up with yourself. And go to bed with yourself. And you spend all of your time with yourself. There’s no one to fight with except yourself, but you always win because you’re by yourself.
And it’s easy to be perfect when you’re in public. When people are looking.
Being married showed me that I hadn’t been as transformed as much as I thought.
I wondered…is it even possible for me to be like those perfect church ladies I so admire? How are they able to be so perfect?”
I was forever failing and asking God to forgive me often for the same things over and over and over.
The perfect woman I thought I’d become wasn’t perfect at all.
I was caught in a cycle of focusing on what was wrong with me and doing the work I believed God wanted me to do to change so I could become that perfect Christian woman.
How were these church leaders able to be so perfect?
I felt like a hypocrite. At home I was one way. At church and in public another.
my frustration with myself made me anxious all the time.
Perfect vs Imperfect…Private me vs Public me.
Then something REALLY crazy happened…
My husband took a position with our church…as a pastor…making me a pastor’s wife.
Think about that…a Pastor’s Wife! I’m already failing miserably at being perfect/struggling with Perfect Image Syndrome and now God throws me into a fishbowl or the fire (depending on how you look at it) or maybe both.
I had no idea that in my three year journey as a pastor’s wife, I would come to a spiritual and emotional crossroad.
