Breaking Up With Perfect {GiveAway Today!!}

Oh my goodness. You know I love “two-fers.” (Make a single investment and get twice the return.) Well today’s post constitutes a two-fer. Last Tuesday author Amy Lively was here to share about her book, How To Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird. (I love that title. 🙂 )

Well, today we get to celebrate a second great give-away by author Amy Carroll. You. Will. Love. Amy. If you could meet Amy you would recognize her infectious laugh and warm smile as an open invitation to be real. Amy get’s it. She know our lives our incredibly busy and her book, Breaking Up With Perfect is exactly what we need to keep the crazies at bay. 

But there’s even better news.

Amy isn’t satisfied to just help us survive—— she want’s us to thrive. Breaking Up with Perfect helps us “end the never-ending stress that chasing Perfect  brings and live a life filled with joy, peace , and spiritual fulfillment.” Let’s hear from Amy!

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“It’s a good day when the water on the bathroom floor isn’t higher than the top of your sandals,” quipped my friend Cathy as our women’s conference in India drew to a close.

Now that’s a new measure of a good day!

India is overload for American senses. Your eye fills with the bright colors of saris, strings of marigolds for a festival, and stacks of fruit being sold in a roadside stand. In your peripheral vision, cars whiz by laced with motorcycles carrying whole families, and you think you might have just seen a bull in the midst of the traffic’s snarl.

The food is an explosion of ten thousand tastes in every bite. Unknown flying objects and pollution make the air a tactile experience, and my friend says that India is “an amusement park for the nose.” It’s the smell of spices, piles of trash, millions of bodies, and the fragrance of flowers.

India feels like chaos to this ordered American girl.

And I love it.

Part of my heart resides in Kolkata, but it seems hard to figure out why. I don’t speak the language, so sometimes communicating is difficult. There’s a different measure of cleanliness which presents significant challenges at times. The ways of people there—from eating to shopping to potties– are diametrically opposed to my own so that the culture shock is more like a sizzling bolt from the sky than a mild zap from a socket.

So why do I love India so much? I love the wildness of India. It teams with life in every inch, and it keeps me off kilter.

India communicates the exotic, extreme Life of God to me.

As CS Lewis said of his character Aslan, a lion who is the symbol of God in the Narnia stories, “He’s not a tame lion. But he’s good.”

Somehow in America, I slide back into my own view of perfection—a room perfectly straightened, mess-free relationships, a god who behaves the way I like and with the timing I approve. In India, all my cultural crutches are removed.

I seek God in every move, and I see Him everywhere.

It’s in the midst of unpredictability that I sense the presence of God most acutely and when I feel the most alive. Yet I’ve been reluctant to give up control. From the time I was a little girl, I tried to shape myself and my environment to please others and earn love. It’s a mistake to try to live this way, though.

God crafted us to reflect His image, not to create our own.

Trying to shape our own image into what we consider perfect gives us less life instead of more. Perfection might make us feel more comfortable, but then we miss out on the majestic wildness of following our untamed but wholly good God. 

Let’s break up with our idea of perfection and walk into the foreign land of trusting God fully as He shapes the perfect path for us filled with His Life.

As a celebration of the release of her book Breaking Up with Perfect, Amy is giving away a copy of her book here this week. Please leave a comment to enter. If you’re living in warp-speed, simply say “I’m breaking up with perfect!” in the comments.

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In case breaking up with perfect is hard for you too here’s an old-time ode from Neil Sedaka. I’m going to listen to it but while I reflect on the fact that break-ups can be difficult I’m going focus even more on the fact that “what we consider perfect gives us less life instead of more.”

Your (No More Perfect…and no more Neil) DoAhead Friend,