I remember being 15 years old.

Sitting in Sunday school class when the teacher passed out a piece of paper with the question: Where do you see yourself in 15 years?

Now, It was a rather strange 15 year old, and I had actually thought about this question a lot.

In fact, I was pretty convinced that I had most of my life figured out.

15 years I will have successfully. Graduated college, married to the man of my dreams. We'll go backpacking Europe the summer right before we start having our five kids each two years apart.

I'll wake up every morning at 5 a.m. . I'll work out for an hour because. You know, I'll be training for marathons and triathlons and then I'll read my scriptures for 30 minutes. The kids will wake up right on. Cue and. They'll then we'll have family scripture, study family prayer before my husband goes off. To work. And then I'll take my kids and we'll go to museums and run through. Sprinklers with our clothes on and eat donuts upside down.

And of course, I'll be skinny always.

Now, at age 15, I was a good girl and I had lots of ambition. And I was a hard worker and determined. And I wanted to be like my savior. And I was I wanted to be have a successful life and make a difference in the world and be a good sister, mother, friend and wife.

But I was a perfectionist.

And what I didn't realize that day in Sunday school is that I had just bought in to one of Satan's greatest lies, the perfect lie.

You see, this light had me convinced that this place and this promised land really existed and that if I could just work hard enough, sacrifice enough,

be disciplined enough that I can make it to this life without failure and flaw. And for 15 years, I tried. I chased perfection.

But here's the thing about the perfect. Lie is it grows and it gets bigger. And as each year passed, it became more demanding, more time consuming. And the checklist of and the expectations of what perfection looked like got longer and longer. I mean, if you love a life. Of being stressed out 24 seven and hoarding all this guilt. And never sleeping. Then it's awesome. But for me, I would wake up every morning. With a long list of everything that needed to be done in order for me. To feel successful. And every night I went to bed feeling like a failure.

And this is how I lived exhausted, broken and. Unhealthy for years. Until one day that perfect lie.

It became too much, too heavy and too.

Impossible for me to carry.

In a matter of months, my life was hit with a tsunami of trials.

My husband lost his job, and I was all of a sudden diagnosed with multiple chronic health issues. And that left me in.

Bed day after day. And with that, I was unable to expand our family and have more children. And the business that I had been running from home for four years giving my soul to all of a sudden was hitting roadblocks. And because of my health, I knew that I needed to walk away and close my business doors. So I did. And as my health declined, everything else in my life did as well, including my mental health. And all of a sudden my world was changed upside down.

And it left me in the most excruciating depression and anxiety that I had ever experienced. Days that were once filled by taking my child on. Outings and never. Watching TV and making organic, homemade meals were now filled with me laying in bed in my sweats. Day after day, I would try to wake up, you know, finally about 10 a.m. ,

and I would walk out to the kitchen and I would get so overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done that I just walked back to my bedroom and pulled the covers up and I turned the TV on for my son, who sat in bed and watched Netflix all day long.

My husband had to make himself pizza or microwave meals, and I didn't cook. I couldn't exercise. I had to drop out of my triathlons. And I never cleaned. I remember one time my son, who was just three years old at the time, and we go to my sister's house and he goes running across the. Floor and he stops and he looks at his feet and he goes, Oh, I love your house. Our floors have dried up guacamole all over them.

And I just I mean, it was so ugly. I couldn't I couldn't do anything. And everything that I ever had been

and everything that had ever been good at was gone.

And it was it was just so. Paralyzing for me. And I remember one Sunday not wanting to go to church, but I somehow made myself get up and go to church.

And I sat down and the opening song started.

And for whatever reason, the floodgates just busted open and tears just start streaming down my face.

And I immediately fled to my car where I locked myself in.

And

the doubt.

And the anger that I had against God at that moment was. So real. And the tears that just I couldn’t stop the tears and the questions. Of doubt that were flooding my mind were almost. Terrifying. Who was I? Who was I? If I wasn't everything that I had ever been,

how could I possibly have worth if all I could do was sit in bed day after day ? Who was I as a wife and a mother when my body wasn't letting me do the things that a wife and a mother should be able to do?

And my entire life, I've been taught that I was supposed to be perfect.

But how could I try any harder? I had nothing left to give. And yet I was still so far away from perfect.

I had always believed that I had a savior. I had a testimony of Jesus Christ my entire life. But in this moment, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure.

How do I use his atonement? To heal me.

I knew how to use this atonement for repentance.

But how do you use Christ in His power?

How could he possibly pull me out of this this darkness and this worthlessness that I felt I didn't know? I honestly didn't know. And I needed answers. And I knew at this moment

I could either let these trials destroy me.

Or I could put God's promise to the test . And I could. I could ask.

And so I did. And I asked and I, I did seek and I knocked harder than I ever have because I needed to know the truth. And at any point in my life, I needed to save your right now.

And for the first time in my life, I opened up my scriptures not to check something off my Christian checklist.

Not so I could be perfect.

I opened those scriptures up because I needed hope. I needed answers. I needed peace. I needed to know who this man was. Jesus Christ.

And for the following months I engulfed myself in his words. And I read and I studied and I just read his life. And as I did.

All of a sudden, these scriptures started to become alive. And these stories that I had that I had read my entire life.

All of a sudden, they weren't just these incomprehensible miracles, but they were real, tangible lessons that had meaning.

And it wasn't easy at first. I used I would sit there and be numb at first. But as I kept trying and I kept at it, it became easier and I wanted to read more. And all of a sudden I was being filled with light.

And I started seeing this theme as I read Christ Life that I had never noticed before.

And I realized with each page that I turned that there was this continual theme in Christ Life and something that was so important to his his daily living was taking something that was broken, inadequate and weak and transforming it. That's what he did. And I started realizing how important our humanity and our mortal our mortal brokenness is.

When 5000 people needed fed and all they had was a meager five loaves of bread in two fish.

Christ didn't say it wasn't enough. He said, okay, what do you have? I know we have a lot of people here we need to feed.

And they said, this is all we got. He didn't condemn or judge it. He goes, That's enough. And then he took that bread and those fish and he poured his power upon it. And he touched it and he transformed it into something miraculous.

He made it enough when those at the wedding feast ran out of wine,

they came to him. He didn't judge. He didn't say, Oh, who planned this party? He wasn't he didn't do any of that.

He goes, Yeah, you have a problem here, right?

He says, okay, well, what do you have? And they had water and so they filled those jugs with water, I'm sure just being like, what's going to happen?

And then he transformed it into wine and not just just enough wine, but he transformed it into the best wine they had had the entire night,

because that's what he does.

He takes our brokenness and he makes it into something more than we could ever imagine it being. But the perfect lie.

You see, Satan wants us to be perfect by ourselves. He wants us. And he takes this perfect lie. And he convinces us that we need to be equal to Christ.

He says you need to be just like Christ. Without Christ help.

You see, Satan says you need to take yourself

and you need to add more upon yourself so that you can equal and be Christ like. Without Christ Grace helping you.

And so this is what he does. And we do this all the time. We say, Oh, man, if I could just be more forgiving. I know I need to be more forgiving. If I could just be more patient. I know I need to be more patient. If I could be more humble, more prayerful, I know, then I'll be like, Christ, I know I'm still so short and I need to do more service. I'm not giving enough service and this is what we do. And we beat ourselves up. But then. But then Satan doesn't just stop there. No, because the next thing he does, he's so sneaky. He just takes Christ out of the equation altogether

and he starts making us chase these alternative equations. To try to get us and tell us that to how we can be enough and to feel satisfied. He says things like, If you would just be skinny, then you'd be happy. If you just had more money, then you'd feel successful. If you had more social media followers, then you'd have friends. If you just had a boyfriend, you'd finally feel loved.

And here we go, chasing these alternative things, trying to be enough, do enough, have enough. And slowly Christ is completely suffocated out of our lives. Completely.

You see the Christ say to be therefore perfect, even as I am? Yes, absolutely. He did say that, but he did not say you need to be perfect today, tomorrow, or even in this life. And he especially didn't say that you needed to be perfect without him. You see,

Satan says that we need it to be add more upon ourselves so that we can equal Christ, but really could anything that we ever put in that equation next to ourselves

are ever equal like Christ? No. No way.

So we fail every day because this is an impossible math equation.

But this is what we think we need to do. But Christ doesn't say that. He says no. He says, Add me upon you and I will make you more.

He says, Come on to me, please sit at my feet,

learn of me and I will make you anything you ever want to be.

I will make you enough. Because that's what I do. I take broken things and I make them anything they want to be and I make them their perfect self. And when we put Christ back into his proper place, when we sit at his feet and learn who He is and trust him and let him in to our lives, we become kinder more. We want to pray more.

We are accepted. We are loved. We have a friend always. And we are happy.

Christ with Christ, we are more powerful and we are enough and we are more because that's what Christ does and that's who He is.

You see. My life about about chasing perfection.

It wasn't about what Christ can make me.

It was about what I thought I needed to do and be in order to be successful.

It was about How fast is your child? Learn the ABCs. How many family vacations have you taken this year?

What size are your genes?

And instead of chasing Jesus, I ended up glorifying checklists and and running around exhausted all the time, trying to get something that was impossible to get.

You see, when God let my life crumble. It wasn't because he didn't love me.

No, it was because he wanted me back. It was because he did love me.

You see, when God let everything just fall apart,

it was because He wanted me to know what it was like to live a life living by grace each day. He wanted me to see what it was like. Just growing line up on line and precept. On precept.

He wanted me to know. That I did have worth.

Not because of anything that I did, but because I'm his.

Because I'm a starter and that's enough.

And most importantly, he wanted me to know Christ to stop trying to be like Christ and instead to be at one with Christ, to be complete with Christ and to be whole with Christ. 15 years ago.

I made a list of what I thought the perfect life. Looked like, and 15 years later. My life looks nothing like that piece of paper. And I'm. Still so broken and a. Hot mess. And most some days I even have dried up guacamole all over my floors.

But it's okay, because now, instead of chasing perfection,

I'm now chasing Jesus. And I've never, never been happier. Thank you.