The initial months after having my firstborn were supposed to be joyful and beautiful, but instead, they were clouded in tears, anxiety, loss of hope, and confusion. Covered in spit up from head to toe and drenched in fear to leave the house, I began to feel like the walls were closing in on me.

I loved this baby girl of mine so much that I pleaded and cried and begged God to tell me why He gave her to me when I was so unfit, so inadequate of her love.

That's when they began to tell me that what I was experiencing wasn't normal.

Looking around and watching every other new mom around me handling this new life effortlessly bombarded my every being.

"Why can't I be like them?" "What is wrong with me?" "I wasn't made to be a mom."

The whispers in my head warned me that something more could be wrong, but I didn't want to hurt myself or my baby. Surely, this was just prolonged baby blues. I had never been depressed before, surely not Post Partum Depression.

But it was.

And I was so ashamed of it.

The first person I entrusted with this terrible secret of mine threw her head back in laughter and screeched, "Oh, that stuff isn't really real. It's only a mindset."

Frozen in pain, I stood there staring straight ahead.

Was I really crazy?

No, I was just utterly, disgustingly imperfect, apparently, facing the perfect woman.

The days that followed were even darker, marred by mistakes and failure.

Until He came and rescued me.

I had forgotten His voice.

I had forgotten His touch.

I had forgotten His power.

But there in my daughter's nursery, in the middle of the night, amongst the heaviest tears, He held me close and drew me near to Him.

Our hardest years were on the horizon but it was Him all along, pulling us closer to His love, His grace, and His never-ending mercy.

My problem was my obsession to be perfect, and the Lord needed me to know that perfection is impossible.

He used this time of repeated failure, glaring imperfection, and shameful (to me) bout of Post Partum Depression to refine me.

Why do we strive for this perfection when we know that Jesus Christ is the only perfect human on this planet?

Our mission, friends, is not perfection.

Our mission is to live in the pursuit of holiness.

We are to be perfected IN CHRIST, not by Pinterest. Not our neighbor. Not even our mom village.

We will NEVER be enough for them, but in striving for holiness, we will be exactly where He wants us to be.

Our standard of perfection? Our standard of self-worth? Our bondage of not being enough?

It is of the world, my friends.

Our freedom is found in the Spirit and not the flesh.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is how we are loved.

"But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Originally posted on The Love Filled Way's Facebook Page.