I don’t think any Christian ever wakes up saying, “God, you’re great, but I’m all about living in my own strength today.”

Still not 100% here, still a ways from it from my perspective, but last time I wrote I said I’d given that up. I wish I felt better than I did. I am praying for healing, not just physically, but for all these different parts of myself. I’m having a few more tests done this week so I’m praying to get some more direction and that it’s nothing too scary. I’m also trying to take the words from my gentle yoga video into account where she says to treat yourself with compassion and not let yourself get into too much of a place of expectation or defeat.

To let it be as it is.

Sorry to be self-absorbed (okay, that’s an outside label I’m going to have to deal with at some point), but one thing that’s kept me busy these months is sitting with my progressive thoughts. This is going to sound obsessive but something I have taken interest in is how cycles repeat themselves. In this case I’m talking about the thought patterns linked to the day of whatever day I’m on in my menstrual cycle.

This really happens.

I’ve never considered myself much of a control freak. I don’t want to control anybody else anymore than I want to be controlled. But I also don’t like when I can’t control things, or rather, when things don’t go the way I want.

In reality it’s never that direct.

I don’t like when I put effort towards something, and it fails to produce the results I am after. I feel like our society is based on a system that works, produces, and then succeeds. I honestly don’t know how to not think like this.

But aiming for success sets a person up for failure. And if you’re trying to succeed, the absolute last thing you want, the thing that will drive you crazy and lead you straight into despair faster than probably anything else, is failure.

I don’t understand this part of myself. I’m not a control freak. I’m not a type A.

I’m a type B living with so many different variables that even I struggle at times to be laid back.

(To all the control freaks out there, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t like to be called that, which is probably why I keep denying that I am one. I’d rather be known as something else.)

But I am a perfectionist. Which means I’ve have had to spend my life trying to figure out how to deal with the fact this world isn’t perfect, including me.

(Right. Right. Right. But I tried!)

Oh no. I’m not going there this time. This isn’t about me having to now go back to the drawing board, back to the journal to figure out what I need to change about myself, what part of myself needs to be ignored, denied, stuffed down, locked away, tweaked, worked on, adjusted, “surrendered”, joked about, and examined in order to survive.

Because while even in my Christian life Jesus was not enough for me (again, it’s never ever that direct), he’s enough for me now, even though I’m still doing it. I’m still noticing and still talking about where things aren’t right and trying to say where I want them now. In the meantime God shows me how they already are. God has always been enough for me. His is the perfection I want, that I have because he freely shared it.