Falling flat, when you only need to lean

I've been feeling the pull of perfection, that tight choking around my neck that makes it hard to speak, to breathe.  It's exhausting, really.  I've given that up so many times, and here I am again with my hands full of some unattainable idea.

This happens when I lose focus.  My blurry eyes can't see the whole picture of what I am here for in the first place, and I get discouraged at my lack of ? (effort, progress, achievement).

I'm driving today, and the car is quiet.  I leave the radio off because I'm frustrated and can't stand to push another sound into my mind.  My son is curled up in the seat beside me with his hoodie pulled well over his eyes.  He is silently avoiding me and my frustrations.

The thoughts are flashing past as quickly as the trees outside my driver's side window.  I'm racing through the past few days and all their memories and mistakes, and I can't seem to find the good of anything I may have done.

I do it to myself, I know.  I see only the weight of what I've messed up on, and how I never allow the scales to tip in my favor.  The voice of my enemy reminds me how I am not good enough.  It has been telling me all week how the house is a mess, and no one has clean socks.  It whispers the memory of feeling belittled by a coworker, and how I had no words to address the offense.  I yelled at my kids.  I was late for a lot of things (everything?).  I mixed up my schedule.  I received a rude hand gesture because of my driving (yes, this bothered me.)  I have gooey cheese crackers scattered all over my van.  I was unkind to my husband.  And of course there's the old thought that someone can always write better, speak better, listen better. . .

I just read a book on this, fasted over this, accomplished some victory over this, and now I am dealing with it again.  Old habits and thoughts die the slowest deaths, and the impatience in me wishes they were already buried.  I would sing at their funeral in my mediocre voice and not think a second thought that it might be a lesser version of what someone else could do.  Because if it was all over and done with, dead and buried beneath the stamped down earth, I would be the champion of receiving grace.

And Jesus tells me how his grace is sufficient for me.  His favor, that I cannot earn by my own try hard ways, is enough.  That I might even be excited at all of my lack, so that Christ's power, his perfect strength, can work through me.  And that is my aim, that I might see all of the ways that I fall short on my own, so I can see all that I am with Him.

Sometimes I forget who I am.  Sometimes I fall, when what I really need to do is lean.

2 Corinthians 12:9

Each time he said, "My grace is all you need.  My power works best in weakness."  So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.