First blog on my world race profile! So exciting! Wait, I have no idea how to blog…
I wrestled with my first blog for so long. I actually had one already posted for a couple of weeks, but it didn’t feel right. I would write sentences down, follow a train of thought and then erase it all and start from scratch. I would try to explain who I am and why I am doing this with the most elaborate compound sentences, the most applicable bible verses, and re-read it at the end feeling like it fell short. I began to feel overwhelmed. I didn’t know why I couldn’t get words down in one blog. Why was it so difficult just to get started?
I was stuck under the expectation to be perfect again. This is probably one of the biggest components of my testimony, the idea that I have to be perfect. It is so crazy because growing up in the church, I knew that perfection was unobtainable. I knew I needed grace and grace alone to cover my sin. But this expectation is a little more intricate than just acknowledging sin in my life and accepting grace. This expectation took the form of a “false Kim.”
False Kim is a Kim that I made up in my head somewhere along the way. False Kim is the Kim I need to be to be fully loved and accepted. She is not allowed to be sensitive, she needs to follow schedules well, she should not be anxious, she should not be affected by what other people think of her, she should ALWAYS be a strong woman of God, the list goes on. Anything less than that, unacceptable. Let me tell you, False Kim is exhausting. She requires so much. Its so hard to keep up with her rules. She’s actually really mean.
God put some really special people in my life this past year to help me notice False Kim and stop listening to her. I cannot begin to tell you how freeing that has been. Suddenly, there were people around me that would see me break down, see me fail, see me get anxious and still unconditionally love me. What?! That was the complete opposite of False Kim. She would always tell me that I need to get my act together and change who I am or face rejection.
Those people in my life were and are a living example of God’s grace and love. I began to finally understand what it means to be FULLY loved by God. His love has no conditions or expectations. He loved me before I even tried to start earning it. Why in the world was I listening to False Kim? Where did she come from?
False Kim is mostly gone. I am not even perfect at ignoring her anymore. But, I have adopted the mindset of Progress vs. Perfection very appropriately named by my friend Ryan (one of those special people, everyone deserves a friend like him). There is incredible freedom there. Instead of not feeling perfect and giving up at the starting line, I can pursue progress. That process is learning who God has created me to be by taking one step at a time to become that Kim. That Kim will sin and fail all the time. But God created that Kim perfectly and delights in her.
And so guys especially in this journey, I want to drop the perfection act. To do that I am going to start by saying I have no idea how to blog. There are a lot of things about this process that I don’t know. I don’t know how to fundraise and I don’t know what I am going to face on this trip.
But what I do know is that my God who I call LORD has called me to pursue this. He is the world’s best fundraiser, the world’s best blogger and the world’s best World Racer. I want his story and his character to be seen through my imperfection, because his story sets hearts FREE. I feel SO incredibly called to GO and help set other hearts free by delighting in them and telling them the greatest love story ever told.
