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If you’re engaged or married, you’re familiar with the joys and challenges of wedding planning.

I don’t know about you, but my husband to be was an easygoing guy when it came to the details of the wedding. The two things Steve cared about for our wedding was our venue and our photographer, so I agreed he could make the decision on those details.

Steve had expensive taste. He chose to have our reception at Brackett’s Crossing Country Club, as I told you about in a previous post. We invited 404 people to our wedding, and the jury was still out on how many were actually going to show up.

Since I was teaching, I had a set salary. Steve was the personal training department head at Life Time Fitness, so he could make more money if he took on more clients. So he agreed to do just that and I’d do the rest of the planning. It helped that I had the summers off  which gave me more flexibility to get things done.

The next item on our wedding “to-do” list was to get our engagement pictures taken. I had created an account on TheKnot.com to assist me in my planning. I actually found the planning was more stressful using that website. I swear there was someone sitting on the backend of the website adding more items to my to-do list just as I finished one task. I felt like it was designed for a crazy OCD bridezilla. And planning a wedding in 6 months was preposterous according to TheKnot! That website loved reminding me how behind I was on my to-dos that weren’t done. I know several people who have planned a wedding in less than 6 months. It can be done ladies!

Originally Steve suggested we get married in June or July, but I didn’t want to wait until then. Besides, summers are known to be wedding season, and I didn’t want our wedding to be just another event to attend on a summer weekend.

Anyhow, we ended up taking our engagement pictures on August 11, 2011 at the Minnesota photography hotspot, the Stone Arch Bridge. We didn’t take any pictures on the bridge, just around that area.

I felt of course like I had nothing to wear. That always seems to happen to me when I have a photography session of some kind. What I have to wear just never feels right and of course it didn’t help that I was still a brunette from my little hair-color experiment.

When we got our pictures back, I didn’t love them at first, not because there was anything wrong with the quality of the work, but it was more me being nitpicky. My hair wasn’t the right color, my arms weren’t lean enough, my smile was unnatural in some of the pictures, and I had a double chin in one of the pictures we took in the grass. YUCK.

It wasn’t until later that I realized what I was doing. I was tearing apart the beauty of what these pictures captured. The point wasn’t to be perfect, the point was to capture the milestone of our engagement and the joy and love we had found in each other.

The ability to criticize is something that I’ve noticed myself and in other women I know. We are our own worst critics when it comes to our beauty, self-confidence, and what we think are “flaws”. We stare in the mirror and tear ourselves down, being overly critical about the most trivial of things, when there is a woman not far from you that is dying to have what you have. Most of the time it’s something physical.

If we have stick straight hair, we want curly hair.

If we have curly hair, we want straight hair.

If we think we our butt is too big, we go to great lengths to trim it down.

If we weren’t born with a shapely bum, we’re trying to build one.

And the list goes on…

 

Why do we strive to attain such unreasonable goals of what this world deems as perfection?

When was the last time you were given a compliment and you just said “thank you” instead of dismissing what was just said about you with some lengthy explanation of why what was just said is untrue?

We have to stop doing that. We have to stop acting as if we’re unworthy of such praise. When you’ve given a compliment, the polite thing to do is to say “thank you” and the healthy thing to do is to believe it!

You need to know and believe in your heart of hearts, that there’s a special stamp of unconditional approval that has been given to you. It resides in the essence of all that you are, put there specifically by God and it extends beyond the hair on your head or your buttocks. It’s more like the special signature that can be found on the bottom of a Cabbage Patch doll, but it’s so much more valuable than that.

 

What do kids do first at school when they’re given a piece of paper?

They sign their name.

 

What do you do when you agree to a financial responsibility?

You sign your name.

 

What does an artist do when they finish his/her masterpiece?

They sign their name.

 

What does a professional athlete do with memorabilia at a press event?

They sign their name.

 

In all these situations, there is some level of value in signing one’s name, but the value of all of these examples pales in comparison to being created by The King. You have immeasurable value and worth because you were created in the Imago Dei, (Image of God)– in his likeness because he has marked you as his.

We have the DNA of our Creator in the depths of our souls. He knows us at our core, our innermost being. Those deep places of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, He already knows about even if you don’t want to go there with him. He knows you struggle with the comparison game, which is quite a nasty one to take part in. You know, the kind where you scroll through your Instagram feed to see how perfect everyone’s life is, only to look at your own and feel less than adequate. I’m guilty of doing the same. When was the last time you saw a bad picture on Instagram? I bet you haven’t, because WE ALL want to be perceived as perfect so why would we post such imperfection?

But really, isn’t the idea of perfection and imperfection in itself? We’re under some illusion that if we just keep trying, we’ll get there eventually, and if not, we’re going to tough it out until we make it across the imaginary line of acceptance. Oh but wait! As soon as you’re about to cross the threshold, the line has been moved and the standard has been changed.

 

The bottom line is we need to quit giving the lies of the enemy power over our lives. He’s been allowed to feed you spoonfuls of death and doubt for far too long. We’ve been conditioned to measure ourselves against a standard of measurement that ALWAYS changes because there is nothing in or of the world that is constant.

You see sisters, we need to put our stock in something real…the ONE that is real, authentic, constant, and accepting, and quit trying to compete with the annoying pest called perfection. We don’t just play this game with ourselves, but we do it to each other.

 

We have all faced rejection in life and part of the problem is we put unreasonable expectations on ourselves to look, act, and be perfect. When we fall short of that perfection we feel rejected and discouraged because of some unrealistic standard we’ve placed on ourselves and each other.

 

Read this excerpt from the book “You’re Already Amazing” by: Holly Gerth.

 

I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that we don’t have to be perfect! Thank you Lord!

 

I love this passage of scripture:

For the sake of his great name the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own.

1 Samuel 12:22

 

Read it again:

For the sake of his great name the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own.

1 Samuel 12:22

GOD WAS AND IS PLEASED THAT YOU ARE HIS! He loves everything about you because HE MADE YOU.

As God’s Word says: the Lord WILL NOT reject his people, because the Lord WAS PLEASED TO MAKE YOU HIS OWN. You don’t have to be perfect, because you are perfectly loved.

He is proud of you. He loves who you are, perfect or not.

 

 

 

My challenge to you is to dig into God’s Word and read about what He says about you. But I want you to do more than just read it, I want you to believe it! And the next time you hear someone struggling with feelings of inadequacy, stand in the gap and speak truth into their lives.

 

And remember, you don’t have to be perfect because you are perfectly loved.