Perfection in Resting

I love to evaluate and set goals. Perhaps that’s why I like New Year’s resolutions more than Valentine’s Day? The problem is, I set ridiculously high goals and then beat myself up for not achieving them! It is January 2 and I’ve already broken my new year’s resolutions! I didn’t exercise and I ate carbs at every meal (so much for no carbs 2012). Oh well, I guess there’s always 2013??

Now is the time I should officially say “Hi my name is Melissa and I’m a recovering perfectionist, a potential legalist, and a guilt addict.”

I’m just not sure I will ever “get my life in order” enough. Seriously, I feel like if I could just meal plan, exercise everyday, clean my floors more often, get ahead of the laundry, then life would be orderly and peaceful. I’m always striving for perfection in every area of my life, forgetting that Christ has made me perfect and learning to walk in that daily.

Yesterday, rather than listing out his new year’s resolutions and making sure he started his new year off “doing” these things, my husband took a Sabbath (a day of rest). He started his new year by skipping church, staying home, resting, and slowing down.

I started the New Year off with 6 hours of sleep, work, and guilt (because I ate carbs and was too tired to exercise). He started it off by resting. It got me thinking . . .

What if instead of starting the new year of with doing, I started it off with slowing down? What if I started the year off resting, remaining, abiding rather than listing, trying, achieving?

That must be why the Psalmist tells us “Cease striving and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)

Perhaps perfection is not attained in doing, but in resting? Resting in knowing that my perfection is in Christ and I am filled with His spirit.

Oh that my new year would be walking in that truth, not my flesh. That it would not be a year of frantic list making, busyness, goals, my will power . . . but slowing down and walking in His power.

Here’s to a year of letting go of perfection and resting in His perfection.

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14)