perfection

When I started this journey several months ago, I was a different person than I am today. I feel like I have lived a lot of life since then. I suppose that is true of any year really but this year I am taking the time to be more intentional and I seem to be noticing my life more.

I guess if I am being frank, when I look back on the girl I was at the beginning of this, although my deepest baseline intention was to submit myself to the Lord, there was also a very real expectation of an overhaul in my body. I had set all these goals and worked hard to accomplish them with perfection.

Here is what I have learned so far.

Perfection in unattainable. No matter how hard you want it or try, it is a standard you cannot fuly reach.

Perfection isn’t necessary. Many of the biggest lessons I have learned along the way have been in my moments of deepest failure or the darkest places my heart has reached.

Perfection doesn’t always mean progress.

That is the thought that I cannot help but smile about today.

When I started this, I was KILLING it. I never missed a goal. The road since then has not always been so strong as it was when I began. It’s like when you start out training on a flat track but soon find yourself running up mountains. The have come and I have slipped and stumbled but I have kept climbing, slowly but surely, I have not given up.

When I started this I was so strict with what I was eating, I was running and drinking all the water. Yet, week after week I climbed on the scale and saw no results, miniscule results or even failures. I put my head down and kept going.

Something that I have learned along the way is that it is necessary to relinquish control and be willing to adapt. I had a plan when I started. I expected results and they did not come, not in my body anyway. My mind was being renewed, my heart tested and strengthened but my body was the same old lumpy body that I hated.

Finally, in desperation, I ditched my plan and took a road that made no sense to me.

The reason I am smiling as I write this is because finally, months later, I have experienced a tiny bit of success. I set some small incremental goals for this and I am so close to finally achieving the first one.

Its small, I still have a long way to go, but I want to shout and dance and cry and throw a party all at once that at long last something is breaking free. After surrendering to a new plan and learning new discipline I am finally seeing something happen.

Sometimes the path we think makes sense or the path that seems like perfection, isn’t the path that will lead us where we need to go. So maybe the biggest thing I have learned so far is to relinquish my expectations, submit and never give up.