Usually when this blog is silent and I don’t talk as much, it usually means God is teaching me. I can honestly say God is teaching me a lot these past few months and I am still unwrapping everything he is trying to say. I have learned something, and I know the ones who are closest to me this will come as no surprise, but I am the hardest on myself when it comes to my Christian walk.

I want to do what is right, despite the fact that I stumble daily.

Just as a little girl growing up who had the desire to please her father, I am a woman who lives her life trying to please her Heavenly Father.

There is just one problem. I fail at it miserably.

When I fail, I beat myself up.

“How can you be so stupid to fall in that trap, have you not learned anything?”

“You have been a Christian for most of your life, why do you still struggle with simple obedience?”

“Why even bother, everyone else seems to have their Christian walk down, me…I feel like as soon as I stand up, I am knocked down.”

I can honestly say in the last month I have awoke early in the morning for my quiet time and sat there saying, “Ok God I am up, I am here, that is all I can manage right now.” And I would sit and listen, maybe read a little while sitting on my back porch watching the birds and how God cares for them.

God is gentle and God leads.

I had one facebook friend say something simple, these are not life changing words, but he does not know those words came from straight from God to my heart. He said, “Sister, you just need to chill.” I know this person is a fellow Christian, a brother in Christ, and he calling me sister I knew his comment came from his heart not from judgment.

And I know God was telling me I just needed to chill.

It is the failed perfectionist in me.  I am like Paul I wanting to do what is right, I want to live the life that God has for me, yet I stumble and fall.  And after the thousandth time stumbling, you begin to wonder what is the use of getting up only to be knocked down again.

Do you see the lies that are being fed to me?

God is gentle and God leads.

I am also in the midst of reading Plan B What Do You Do When God Doesn’t Show Up the Way You Thought He Would? by Pete Wilson.  I will be reviewing that book as soon as I finish it, but I have to say my WHOLE life has been living out Plan B! If I were living out the plan I had planned I would have experienced a big wedding, with wedding gown.  Instead I had a small wedding with family and a gown off the sale rack.   I would be living in Phoenix next to my family. Instead I am on the OPPOSITE side of the US from them.  I would have had three boys and a girl. Had to stop at three due to difficult pregnancies.  But God had other plans; God had a Plan B for me.  I am not saying I don’t like where I am, it is just different from what I had in my mind. In fact I LOVE the town I live in.

God is gentle and God leads.

Then yesterday God led me to listen to Jonathan Acuff’s video Be Sick, Be Loved. This is a great video but the one thing the Lord laid on my heart was eliminating the phrase “by now should.”

By now I should not have to struggle with unbelief.

By now I should not have to deal with this sin once again.

By now things should be different.

With a woman who is struggling with turning 40 this year, I have said “by now should” a lot.  I did not realize that until yesterday.  And by doing that I was beating myself up for failing in my spiritual walk.

By showing up even if it is to say, “Ok God I am up, I am here, that is all I can manage right now.” God is gentle and He leads.  And tells me to chill, to live Plan B to the fullest, and eliminate the words “by now should.“  Because He said I can BE SICK (fail, struggle, stumble down for the millionth time) and still I am LOVED.  He tells me to Stand, Stay and Be Strong.

Do you struggle with being a perfectionist in your Christian walk, do you beat yourself up when you stumble for the hundredth time?  Sometimes do you look up and ask what is the use of getting up again?

I want to tell you, God is gentle and He leads.  He did not come for the perfect, for the ones who have it all together, he came for the ones who are sick, who fail, who are weak.  It is then at that point he can make something beautiful.