Hello everyone! Kristin here on the REP blog today with a new lyric that is one of my favorites. If you read the post from Monday, you will know that one of my most beloved bands is The Oh Hellos. One of the songs I can’t stop listening to from this group is called “I Have Made Mistakes”. The reason: it reminds me that I am not perfect.
I am a perfectionist. I’ve always been incredibly hard on myself if I wasn’t meeting my high standards. With this comes an unnecessary burden that steals joy out of everything. For example, when I expect relationships with others to be perfect, any flaw or failure of mine suddenly makes me assume I will not be accepted or loved, or I may expect too much out of them in return. When I expect my work to be perfect, I spend hours upon hours stressing over the details, and this can lead to discouragement, lack of rest, and a fear to try anything new.
Over the past few years, I’ve been made aware of just how deep this perfectionism goes, and friends, it’s deeper than I would like to admit. Yet, thank God that He is showing me the areas of life where my joy is robbed because of this. Recently, He’s used these lyrics as a means to do so. If I look back over the course of my life, I see that the times I grew the most occurred during hardship, during the rainstorm, during the not-so-perfect moments. Those mistakes were for my benefit, to remind me that I am not God. The pressure to be perfect is off!
Now, I’m not advocating that we strive to make mistakes, but rather that we accept the fact that we will make them. It’s inevitable. The great thing is that they provide us opportunities to learn, grow, and be strengthened by them. That being said, let’s not be afraid to admit that we have made mistakes, and let’s choose to accept them as opportunities to strengthen our soul.
Song: I Have Made Mistakes
Artist: The Oh Hellos
Album: Through The Deep, Dark Valley
