Much of many people's lives, much of my life, has been characterized by distrust of God.

I've tried to steal His role in my life more than once. It's dangerous to try to play God. You only end up hurting yourself and others.

Let go of control.

In trying to play the perfectionist and the ruler, I have used these two weapons against myself:

a critical eye and a measuring stick.

It all points back to an addiction to control and an illusion that I should be in control.

What a waste.

Like I can actually control anything — or I am actually capable of perfecting myself...

A critical eye can make you blind to beauty.

Hard work is a good thing, but when the drive of that work is perfection and you have a talent for sighting imperfections, the work is hopeless and unforgiving.

And it's only compounded by the measuring stick.

We slap our sticks up against the people around us and measure our insides to their outsides.

Then we recalculate and push harder to reach their level of perfection ...or we console ourselves with those we see as lesser by our measurements.

And we ask 'what if' too often, and we try to bend this life warped to fit our agendas.

But we are warping ourselves.

We were never created to control everything or even anything. We certainly aren't capable of perfection. And we absolutely cannot be compared to others.

At the back of this perfectionism that we can struggle with is something good: a desire to set things to rights.

Jesus gives us an answer to this longing, this aching that we can't quench. He is perfect. He has set things to perfectly to rights, and we can trade with Him for the price of the lives we have already wrecked: take His perfection and give Him our failed strivings.

He offers to take a soiled rag and give us resplendent robes.

We didn't earn it in any way with our hard hand or critical eye or measuring stick!!

I've come to learn more fully the depth of the word GRACE in the past year.

Like a Sleeping At Last song called One says, "I spend my whole life searching desperately to find out that Grace requires nothing from me."

Just fall into that freedom, that peace.

Stop comparing and start worshipping. Start standing in awe instead of picking out flaws. Stop beating yourself up over and over. I know I have.

When we don't give ourselves grace, we don't give it to anyone, not really.

Accept God into your life and give Him the wheel. He is a much better driver. And He will always give grace.

You don't have to worry anymore. You never did. The driver of your car controls everything.

Take the cup He gives right in this moment, no matter what it contains, because I have learned it:

"This challenging reality's better than fear or fantasy." (Sara Groves)

I have lived enslaved to perfectionism and fear of failing, an alien to understanding grace though under the grace of God.

It has pushed me to escape into adrenaline and into the fantasies of books and my imagination.

I couldn't fix myself and others like I wanted to.

And I couldn't bear the weight of that burden. I still try sometimes, unfortunately.

But as Sara Groves sung: "Here's to our chasm of need, and how it binds us together in faith and vulnerability."

It's okay to miss the mark of the right and beautiful because Someone already hit it, and He credits it to us if we are His.

Grace. this word..

I could sing it out all the day long. What a gift.

The apostle Paul writes:

"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it [thorn in his side] away from me.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." -2 Corinthians 12:8-9