How to Be Perfect

 

         When I was younger I was under the impression that when I became a teenager, I would also become perfect.

 

 

        My disappointment stung when I looked into the mirror one day and just saw me.

 

Uncertain.

Insecure.

Scared.

Flawed.

Imperfect.

     I want to be perfect, not so much for others, but for myself. I want to feel flawless. I want to be brilliant, funny, beautiful, intelligent, talented. I want to be the prime example of perfection.  

But I’m not.

 

      Every day I tell myself that school doesn’t define me, but every day I feel it crushing me more and more. I feel like I’ve been thrown into a furious black, freezing river and mathematics are the weights tied around my waist—they pull me down and down, it doesn’t matter if I’m a strong swimmer, I’m still going to drown.

 
     I want to be intelligent, but how can I when I spend an hour re-working the same simple problem over and over and over and over again because I cannot get it right? 

      How can I when I am re-sending an assignment because I misunderstood the instructions and expectations for a third time?

     How can I when I am auditing a class because I cannot grasp anything despite the hours of my teacher helping me through problems and the hours of me studying the same module over and over again?

     How can I when girls around my age are already talking about college and I am just trying to pass my freshman year of high school?

 

      I feel worthless, and sometimes I convince myself that I am.

      The other day I was walking past a gentleman at my church, he greeted me and asked me how I was.

 

       I told him I was good.

      But he looked at me and said, “No, how are you really?”

     
     The question caught me off guard. I’m so use to giving my normal robotic answer, most people don’t really care to know how you really are, it’s just a greeting, it’s just a meaningless greeting.

I am….

     Stressed. Down. Angry. Confused. Depressed. Flawed. Imperfect. Unworthy. Unlovable.
 
     I don’t know why I feel like this. I wish I did, but here I am. I’m broken. I’m so, so, so broken.

    I am shattered, fragments of me cover the ground. I feel unfixable.

    My imperfection angers me. I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to struggle with school, I don’t want to be insecure, I don’t want to feel like I’m useless.

     Questioning the creator. That’s what my mom said when I asked why on earth out of all of the thousands of way better people would God care about me. 

So, now you’re questioning the creator?    

  Am I? Is questioning myself also questioning Him?   
 
"I praise you because I am perfectly and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”-Psalm 139:14

       I am perfectly and wonderfully made. I am here for a purpose, and I don’t know why yet, but my life isn’t a mistake… and neither is yours.

        Look, I don’t know where you are in your life right now. I don’t know what you’re struggling with, but I do know that you’re here for a purpose, whether you know it or not.   

     Today I wanted to give up, but I’m here. I’m here. Not by mistake.

      We’re people, we’re children of God, not mistakes. And one day we are going to look back and think, I made it. YOU are perfectly and wonderfully made.

         The God who made the universe decided to put you in it, do you think he made a mistake?

 

      We’re going to make it. I’m going to make it. You are going to make it. 

      Our lives are worth so much, even if it is hard to wrap your head around that right now. So just breathe. Do you feel the air filling your lungs, leaving, and returning again? That’s perfection.
 
       How are you?



      How are you really?