Imperfection

I've only been at Franciscan for a week and God has already blown my mind with everything that He's taught me and started to heal me of. I think I might grow even more in my faith than last semester, if that's even possible. But we are called to ongoing conversion.. we don't just get to a certain level and then call it good. We must always work with God to grow deeper in knowledge of Him and His love and ever further away from sin.

The idea of imperfection and humility has been thrown in my face this week- in conversations with friends, priests' homilies, class lectures, and FOP speeches. I have been a perfectionist all my life.. part of it is my desire to always please people, for them to have a good impression of me. The other part is for me to please myself and inflate my own pride. I've been trying to work on my pride for some time now, and thought I was doing pretty good (which is prideful in itself haha)- but this weekend helped me to see that I still have a long way to go.

God helped me realize that I'm scared not to be a perfectionist. I don't know what that feels like. I'm scared to loose control and show my faults to others. I've come a long way with admitting my faults to myself and embracing them, but I still can't seem to show them to other people. There's something blocking me everytime that I try to. My friend here described it as being a "super-server." It is someone who serves the Lord in various ministries, who always tries to make it seem like he/she is serving perfectly and doesn't have one fault. I've fallen into this trap so many times. Especially with Haiti. I don't want it to seem like I'm the perfect missionary, because I'm not. Far from it. But with God's grace I can continue on my journey and serve the way He wants me to. So, when reading my blog postings about my trips or looking at my pictures, please don't look at me but at Christ working through me in all my imperfections.

God also showed me some wounds in my heart that have led me to this state of needing perfection. I think that I need to prove myself to God. That I need to have perfect holiness in order for Him to love me, in order to be good enough for Him. If I don't, then maybe He won't think I'm worth loving anymore and He'll get mad at me. This is the FARTHEST thing from the truth!! There is nothing that I can do that will make God love me more, because God IS love. There is also nothing that I can do that will make God love me less, because God is love. To not love any one of us would be to contradict Himself, which is impossible because He is absolute Truth. So I need to stop thinking that I need to be a certain person in order for Him to love me- He loves me just the way I am. Yes, there is always room for improvement, but we need to fully accept ourselves in our present state before we can start growing in true holiness. You don't need to be perfect to be good- Jesus knows that we can't save ourselves and that we're going to sin. That's why He came to die for us.

The secret of the saints is not that they were perfect (like I tend to think of them as) or that they constantly sacrificed. It lies in the fact that they accepted that they were weak, and allowed God to work through them and strengthen them. They were humble enough to admit their struggles and weaknesses before God and man, and themselves. God loves us despite our imperfections- He wants to help us fix them, but won't turn us away because of them. Look at the majority of the saints- some of the greatest sinners came to be the greatest saints due to God's unending mercy and love.

I came across this message from God the Father in one of Anne a Lay Apostle's volumes: "Children, I love you in all your imperfection. I love you with all of the scars and marks you carry as the result of your flaws and mistakes. They mean nothing to Me in the sense that I did not make you to be perfect. I made you to overcome your weaknesses, and, utilizing your free will, to choose Me."

Also, Fr. Jacques Philippe says in his book "Interior Freedom" that "the person God loves with the tenderness of a Father, the person he wants to touch and to transform with his love, is not the person we'd have like to be or ought to be. It's the person we are. God doesn't love 'ideal persons' or 'virtual beings.' He loves actual, real people. What often blocks the action of God's grace in our lives is less our sins or failings, than it is our failure to accept our own weakness. We refuse to admit that we have this defect, that weak point...and so we block the Holy Spirit's action, since he can only affect our reality to the extent we accept it ourselves. We must accept ourselves just as we are, if the Holy Spirit is to change us for the better. We need to desire to change, but without ever refusing, even subconsciously, to recognize our limitations or accept ourselves."