I don't think I want to be amazing...

...I think I want to be real.

I'm a perfectionist by nature.  Sometimes I am able to balance that fairly well, utilizing its strengths and downplaying its weaknesses.

But sometimes, it just makes me feel like a piece of perfect looking plastic with hidden scratches and a flawed structure.

Sometimes I need to be reminded how small and imperfect I am underneath everything I'm learning, underneath the success, underneath the life-that is-ever-so-wonderful.

I'm a small, weak, sinful person.

I have a strong God.

And sometimes I need the humbling reminder of that, of the fact that I can't do it all.  Of the fact that being wrong and being hurt and being vulnerable and messy isn't always a bad thing.  Of the truth that it's so much more fulfilling to be real and to be following Jesus honestly than to be putting up walls and painting pictures of a perfect person I'm not.

And it's so amazing to see God make beautiful things out of messes.