Imperfection!

2 Corinthians 12:9 New International Version (NIV)

⁹ 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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

I don’t know about you guys, but I really don’t like clutter. It will accumulate in the various closets and corners of my house for a couple of months, and then I get to the point where I CAN. NOT. take it anymore. When the Marie Kondo show hit Netflix in January (which is all about decluttering your life), I wouldn’t even watch it, because I was already nearing clean-out mode, and I knew that would just put me over the top. Instead, I just dug in and started trashing, selling, and donating things—to the point where I spent over an hour last Sunday afternoon at what used to be Hastings, selling old DVDs and CDs that I hadn’t touched since I was in high school. A month in to the new year, I feel like I am about mostly through my decluttering process. The remaining areas (my closet and craft room) are ones that I’m a little nervous about digging in to because I know that they will be the most painful.

This morning, one of my favorite ladies that volunteers with us posted her morning devotional, and the message was basically that no matter how perfect you try to make something, a scratch will always pop-up. Just when you finish your to-do list, something else will inevitably get added. You wash your car on Friday, only to have it start raining first thing Saturday morning. You finally get your baby to sleep, only to have her older brother wake-up. And on and on and on.

The fact we can rest in, though, is that perfection is just not attainable. Even though that can be tough news for some of us, it’s meant to have the opposite effect. We can literally sit back and rest, knowing that in the places where we are weak, Christ will make us strong. It is such a temptation to believe the lie that we have to have it all together. When we believe this, though, and we try to do everything on our own, without submitting to God’s plans, we push Him out and don’t leave room for his power to work in the places where we are weak. It’s only when we admit that we need Him that He is then able to lift us up to where He wants us to be, and take those areas of imperfection and make them strengths in ways that only He could.

God created us, and He knows intimately those weaknesses, and the places where we need Him. He is simply waiting for us to yield so that He can step in and work in amazing ways. Even if we think we are, we aren’t hiding those weaknesses from Him, and we probably aren’t doing that great at hiding them from others, either. Just as my scary craft room closet seems to always have a piece of ribbon sticking out, or a stay paper peeking out from under the door, those weaknesses have ways of constantly coming to the surface and showing their ugly faces, especially on days when we are particularly pressed.

The only thing we can do is thank God that our weaknesses draw us closer to Him, and then try to stay out of the way and let Him get to fixing us. As we all know, admitting that you have a problem is the first step to repair. May God lead us to that place, and may we rest in our imperfections, following God’s plan rather than our own. 

PS-- That is NOT my actual closet, and I'm hoping by the end of the weekend, mine won't look like that anymore. Pray for me. :)