Whenever I start to get comfortable in my faith and think I know what it takes to live out my life in service of Christ, the more God shows me that I clearly have a lot more learning and growing to do. It’s easy to get wrapped up in checking boxes and fitting an external image of what I think a follower of Christ should be like, while ignoring (or simply being ignorant of) the change that needs to happen within my own spirit.

I initially approached my faith journey with the expectation that at some point, I would become a great person with a “perfect” character. Well, obviously not perfect, because that’s not possible, but close to perfect… right? As it turns out, I was dead wrong. In fact, I’ve found that the more “perfect” I feel like I am, the farther I am from actually being the best version of myself. On the other hand, when I am reflecting deeply on my flaws, I am able to realize how desperately I need Christ’s mercy, recognize where I need to grow, and humble myself enough to ask God for the willingness and strength to let them go.

You see, part of the human condition comes with the reality that I will always be subject to flaws, temptations, and insecurities. The more I try to ignore and deny those things within myself and convince myself that I have overcome them, the more I cut myself off from achieving actual growth. In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” I’ve found that this includes denying myself the comfort of ignoring seemingly harmless habits, thought patterns, and attitudes. When I really take the call to deny myself daily seriously, I can pause, listen to what Christ is calling me to reflect on, and sit with the uncomfortable reality of my imperfections. It is a state of constant pain, but also deep fulfillment.

Digging Deeper

I still have much to learn about myself and have many undiscovered defects under the surface, keeping me from being truly united with Christ. However, lately, I have recognized a few key patterns within myself that are easy to ignore and make excuses for, all of which scripture warns about.

Assigning Expectations to People

First of all, it’s important to separate expectations in a worldly sense versus a spiritual sense. For example, an employee has to meet expectations to retain their employment, a parent has to meet certain standards to keep custody over their children, and so on. People who have made a commitment to fulfill a certain role should be held to the standard of that role; otherwise, boundaries should be set and consequences should be met.

However, spiritual problems arise when I start staking my worth, well-being, and emotional state on the expectation that someone will fulfill a certain role in my life (friendship, partnership, caregiver, etc.,), especially when the expectations are not explicitly communicated. I require a constant reminder that my desire to control other people’s actions shows two key things: 1) I don’t trust the free will that God gave them to make their own decision about how they want to fit into their life, and 2) I don’t trust that God alone is enough to satisfy my needs.

Psalms 146, verse 3-4, says: “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.”

Working through this malady requires me to take feelings of disappointment, self-righteousness, and self-pity that I feel when I allow other people to disappoint me and throw them towards God to help me release them. Next, I need to challenge myself to envision what it would look like for me to interact with the people in my life without expecting any emotional, physical, mental, or spiritual benefits, and then start aligning myself with the right actions and the right thought patterns.

Fantasizing About the Future

As someone who likes to set grandiose goals for my life, I find myself often wrapped up in the thrill of imagining what life will look like when I hit a certain goal, achieve a milestone, or reach a new phase of life. Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with setting goals. In fact, I encourage it—I write my goals down on paper every single morning. However, the danger comes when I start shifting my focus to the future as a form of escapism rather than enjoying the gift of the journey of life that God has blessed me with. When my mind is too forward-focused, I become imbalanced, distracted, and tempted to try to control things that are only in God’s control.

Ecclesiastes 7:13-14 shares wisdom on living in the present rather than trying to control outcomes: “Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future.”

Releasing this tendency to fantasize comes down to 1) constantly reminding myself of the importance of surrender, 2) practicing changing my habitual brain patterns, and 3) giving my future goals a dedicated time in the day (a few minutes of focus and planning in my morning routine) and then shifting my attention back to the present so I can live the rest of my day fully engaged with the stage of life I am in right now.

Escaping Uncomfortable Feelings with (Seemingly Harmless) Pleasure

Few things are more tempting than to take a moment of boredom, vulnerability, rejection, anxiety, or any other uncomfortable emotion and override it with a dopamine-boosting habit. Oftentimes, it’s the more subtle types of pain that are the harder to deal with. Pain that is blinding, suffocating, and intense can be somewhat addictive as well, but pain that stirs subtly under the surface like an unsettled dust cloud is often the most infuriating to tolerate. Especially as an athlete, I find myself eager to subject myself to workouts, events, and races that bring me to the verge of puking or hallucinating. But after one rest day, I am bored to the point of crashing out.

1 Peter 5:7 reveals how to deal with unsettling emotions: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

As a flawed human being, I have found it nearly impossible to surrender these habits by relying on my own willpower. Personally, I find the urge to numb discomfort to be overwhelming. In fact, as I’m writing this, I’m drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper! Now, pleasureable things are not inherently bad unless they are self-destructive or become something that you depend on, but clearly, I have a lot of work to do. It helps me to remember that God can bear these burdens for me and, like as before, focus on flinging these emotions to Him in surrender.

Wrapping it Up

While it is admirable to make the effort to work through flaws, one thing I need to remind myself of is that being human means that I will ALWAYS be imperfect, no matter how much work I put into myself. Truly, the most important step to take on my journey towards God is to be aware of how flawed I am and realize that my weaknesses are the reason I need Christ so desperately. The main traps I can fall into that can cause me to stall in my spiritual growth are to ignore the fact that I have flaws (even subtle ones), to become obsessed with the pursuit of becoming perfect, or to use the excuse that “I will never be perfect” to outright reject God’s commandments and make no attempt to follow them.

Last but not least, this era of my faith journey can be summed up well with 2 Corinthians 12:9: “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.”

I pray that I never forget the importance of acknowledging my faults, and that they always serve as a reminder of the fact that I am a cherished daughter of the Lord.