May 20

“I’m a perfectionist,” I’d tell myself and then promptly follow it with other reasons why things just had to be a certain way. It was a preferred way to live and keep certain parts of life “just so.”

Eventually, as I got older I found ways to use my organizing and planning skills where they brought joy and peace, but also with a surrender to the messier things of life. I can likely thank my children for helping me in that endeavor. What a gift!

As one heck of an organization and planning junkie, I can still get so caught up in those amazing planning skills that I am paralyzed to create forward movement. I’m captivated by planning something out so beautifully perfect, that it’s never quite just right. It’s true, we’re our own worst critic.

I can often think that what I’m working on could be just a little better. There’s always someone else doing it with more success/crushing it/winning at that thing better than me because I’m stuck planning. Many times I’ve been hit with “decision fatigue” and miss the opportunity simply because it passed me by. If I failed, it was because I didn’t even get to try and if I didn’t try, no one saw me fail. The inner stories I tell myself are the ones that impact my ability to move forward, to create and to be the best version of myself. What I’m often seeing when I see that person over there on social media rocking her gifts God gave her or winning her Mom of the Year award, it’s just the top of the mountain captured in a square. What I am missing is seeing the deep, hard, underground work of good habits, persistence and the previous failures.

What if I watched her a little less and focused on Him a bit more? What if when He asked me to rise up, take a risk and be authentically me, rather than get caught up in the cobweb of perfection, I did just that? That’s the beautiful life I want to lead. Rejecting those perfections that I cling to so tightly in order to open myself up to receiving. As long as there’s breath, there’s hope for making adjustments and cultivating personal growth. I’ve slowly been making progress and jumping in regardless if I know how to do something, how nervous it used to make me, or how others perceived me those times I just plain messed up.

I’m looking forward to finding more ways to choose action over perfection. Living a life with more freedom to grant myself (and others) more grace to be uniquely ourselves encourages all of us to see more clearly through a Christian lens.

Sarah Heidelberger is a wife and homeschooling mom of five who keeps her days steady with her planning and organizing skills. Read more about her on the “Perpetual Posters” page.

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