I can’t stand when my sandals have a scuff on the toe.
I hate continuing to wear nail polish that has already chipped.
And, if my makeup isn’t symmetrical, y’all, it’s getting redone.
I can look at a picture of myself, and find the tiniest flaw, that you would never notice.
In my tenth grade cheerleading pictures, my red lipstick is heavy in the corners of my mouth. And, I think my exact words when I got my pictures back were, “I look like I’m wearing clown makeup.”
In my eleventh grade prom pictures, I’m wearing a strapless dress, and you can see the little piece of fat between my arm and my armpit. I can’t tell you how many people tried to convince me, “Everyone has that.”
Those little flaws, someone else would never notice, but when I looked at those pictures, they were all I could see.
I’m not even looking at those pictures right now, but I can see the things I hated, so vividly in my mind. I spent so much time tearing myself down for every little thing, and listening to rude things other people had to say about me. Now, I look back on pictures of myself when I thought I was too chubby or too whatever, and I’m like “WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING?!”. I look beautiful in those pictures, and the things I thought were the biggest flaws, aren’t even noticeable.
I can hear my mom’s voice ringing in my head so clearly, “Cheree, you are too hard on yourself.” And, it took me almost nineteen years, and the past two months of going to some hard places emotionally, to accept that she is right. And, that striving for perfection isn’t normal.
Over the last two months, I have been reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. And, as my squad leader, Sara Mac, says, “It has wrecked me, in the best of ways.” Every chapter, the Lord has read me like a book as I’ve read this book. The theme of each chapter is about letting go of a mentality that is causing you to strive to be everyone but who the Lord made you to be. The Lord has been teaching me to let go of perfectionism, comparison, what people think, numbing my feelings, and a ton of other things that are so good but so hard. I’m realizing what things I do in order to fit in, to be cool, to be accepted. I’ve learned that I please, perform, perfect, and prove, to the point that I can chameleon myself to be whoever you need me to be. But, by learning all the things I run to in order to avoid the vulnerability of authenticity, I have also been learning my true-self. I don’t like being a cliché, so I hate saying that I am on a journey of “finding myself.” But, y’all, I so am. I don’t know who I really am because I spent so long being everything to everybody. So, over the last few months, I’ve learned, that I do enjoy writing, my favorite color is actually hot pink, and I like hot tea just as much as sweet tea.
Granted, those things are small and a little silly, but I’ve found that you have to learn the little things about yourself before you’re ready to really dig into the depths of who you are. Are there any big things or even little things that the Lord created unique about you that you have suppressed in order to change and be who the people around you wanted you to be?
