Letting Go

My son purchased a watercolor paint set for me for Christmas (it was what I asked for). So the other day, I found some time to sit down, find a YouTube video for beginners and begin to learn how to paint with watercolors.

Now let me just tell you right now, that I am a bit of a control freak. I am a color within the lines kind of person. I would also never consider myself an artist, so to take on this endeavor is a real stretch for me. I’ll admit also that I sometimes have delusions of grandeur. I have a vision of what I would like, but to create that vision is as elusive to me as winning the lottery.

To stare at a blank piece of paper, come up with my own design, this typically would cause me to break out into a sweat, but I was determined. This time would be different. I was going to adopt the mantra of “Frozen” and “let it go!”

This got me to thinking about how us control freaks could adopt this “let it go” attitude in our daily living and relationships. I mean we all know that perfectionism is a myth, right? Nothing is perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect marriage, perfect parent, perfect church, or perfect job. No, perfection flew out the window when Adam and Eve sinned in the perfection of the Garden of Eden.

We can choose to pick our battles, because that is what the pursuit of perfection does, it boxes us into a corner. We become like a child, full-blown into the terrible three’s, throwing a tantrum, demanding our way. We may not have control over our circumstances or in our relationships, but we can control how we react to them. We need to “let it go.”

Instead let’s let go and shift our focus to the One who is perfect. Let’s pursue to be perfect, that is growing into the likeness of Jesus Christ. When we want to know what true perfection is all we have to do is look to Jesus. Jesus is, after all, the Perfecter of our faith. Let Him show you what it means to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

Rejoice today in the fact that because He is the perfect, sinless, Son of God, He was able to pay our debt in full by dying on the cross. We no longer have to work ourselves into a frenzy trying to reach some false ideal of perfection, instead we can let it all go and rest in His perfection.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

2 Corinthians 5:21

It’s a new day, the perfect day to begin to pry our fingers off of our perfect ideas, our perfect plans to get started on our diets and workouts, how we want our children to behave, or how we want our husbands to work on our to-do lists around the home. You have a blank piece of paper today, take a deep breath, let it go.