Perfect Christian Women

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but a lot of female Christian authors are blond, thin, and pretty.
Every now and then, life throws you a curve ball and you see a brunette wearing a size 12. Let's face it, though... blond and perky is the norm.

I took note of this many years ago, so when my book was published in 2005, I dyed my hair blond and went on a diet. I also decided my hair wasn't stylish enough by simply being blond, so I got it cut super short. I was trying to be retro, but I ended up with what my friends now jokingly refer to as "the lesbian haircut."

I also decided that female Christian writers - well, Christian women in general - should never use sarcasm or quick wit. After all, we know from watching "Jesus of Nazareth" that Jesus was never jovial. Also, he never blinked.

I also found that many of the "church ladies" I knew said things like "thank you, Jesus" and "oh, my heavens" on a regular basis, so I tried to incorporate this into my own vernacular. I never got the timing quite right. My inability to be somber 24 hours a day really messed with this concept. I'd be driving down the highway and some wonderful gentleman who was created in the image of God would cut me off, and I'd find myself saying stuff like, "THANKS A LOT, JERK! I mean, um... oh, my heavens! Perhaps you should drive more carefully, sir. Amen! Praise Jesus!" I tried not to blink but I ended up spending a lot on eye drops, so I gave that up.

There were a few things I could not remedy, no matter how hard I tried. I didn't have 2 kids, a house with a white picket fence, or a dog. We could have adopted a baby from China, but what if the book failed? Adoption agencies don't have return policies and you can't put kids on layaway.

Fearing that I wasn't good enough to hold the title of Christian Author, I concluded that writing my book in my own voice would not suffice. Instead of writing like Julie Fidler, I tried to write like Beth Moore, Shaunti Feldhahn (my mentor of 8 years, no less), and a combination of several other authors I liked better than myself. It all backfired like a '75 Chevy on cinder blocks in front of a beat-up trailer.

Five years have past since that book came out and I've been struggling to write another one ever since. All of my experiences with the first one only showed me that I couldn't play in the big leagues. Until recently, that is.

As it turns out, I've not been comparing myself only with other authors, but with other Christian women in general. I have spent many Sundays sitting in a pew at my church, watching the other women around me, convincing myself that they have it all together and I don't. Worse yet, I thought they could see right through me and just KNOW that I was 'messed up.' If imperfection could be worn like a tattoo, mine would be scrawled on my forehead.

Maybe it's age, maybe it's life experience, maybe it's just growth in the Lord, but...I have decided this is craziness and I'm not going to allow it to creep into my life any longer. I say let's see each other for what we really are - messed up people who need God's grace every day so we don't have to be messed up anymore. I have a tattoo and so do you - "SINNER SAVED BY GRACE." I used to think I was the only woman in the world who felt this way, but as I shared my own struggles and doubts, I found out that a lot of us, if not most of us, either struggle with it now or have struggled with it in the past.

All this to say, we're so busy studying our cuts and scrapes, we forget to look at the holes in the hands of the One who can wash all of that away.

If our idea of perfection is the woman sitting two rows down from us on Sunday morning, we are going to be so totally disappointed. We'll never reach the mark, and if we did, it wouldn't be a mark worth reaching. If I try to write a book like one of the 'perfect' authors I've admired for so many years, I would be overlooking the very real truth that those books were written based on difficult life lessons that the authors learned, walls they climbed, and demons they conquered.

I'd rather compare myself to the man on the cross up at the altar. My imperfections will be made perfect. My sin has already been washed away. If we crawl deep into the hearts, minds, and lives of the people we look up to, we will always find sin and corruption, but not if we crawl deep into who Jesus is. There is the mark. Let me reach that one.

To steal a line from a great Switchfoot song, "We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight."
So I vote we cling to the only One who really holds us up. Anything less is gonna drag us down. Pin It