You can sleep when you're dead.

I hate this phrase. I don't want to sleep when I'm dead, I want to sleep now. At night. When the normal people sleep. For the WHOLE night. But, I have been super busy and already a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of responsibility and the sheer amount of things that I need to get done this semester. There just don't seem like enough hours in the day to get everything done that everyone expects of me. Little did I know, senior year was going to be something I DIDN'T want to participate in, and often this saying starts to become more and more true of my life. But God is good, he is my strength and I am definitely relying on him to get me through the year.
 One thing I learned on summer project that has been huge since coming back is learning that I am just one person, I am not perfect, and I can not be everything to everyone. I cannot fill everyone's expectations perfectly, nor can I handle doing everything anyone ever asks me to. The only person perfect enough to fulfill everyones expectations is Jesus. A huge struggle of mine that God is meeting me in, and freeing me from is the need to never make a mistake. I learned this summer a lot about the fact that me trying to not make mistakes in front of people was a way that I was not being vulnerable or authentic with them.
Authenticity is an idea that is central to the church and to CRU movements as well. Without authenticity you get churches and organizations that cannot welcome people in, because the standard to belong to the group is perfection, and that is unreachable. Without authenticity you get churches full of white washed tombs like the Pharisees in Jesus' day. Without authenticity our church becomes about who is the best actor or actress, who can make everyone believe that they are fine and not falling apart the best. Authenticity is huge in both sharing good things with others, and in showing others that I don't have everything all put together in a pretty little package.  One of my mentors on project challenged me to be vulnerable about my mistakes. To be able to make a mistake and let others interpret that and judge me how they want to. I have started to live my life this way, at first it was extremely hard to resist the urge to instantly fix the mistake, or hide behind excuses, but what I have found, really, is freedom. It is freeing to be able to embrace my imperfection, to let people know that I am not perfect and they don't need to expect me to be. To be able to apologize for not coming through, but then move on. Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't some miracle transformation where I understand and can just graciously make mistakes now. No, I still struggle with that awkward combination of being a perfectionist and a procrastinator. But I have been learning, and I have been trying to put what I have been learning into practice. And that is what God desires from us right? To listen to his voice and then act on it. To not sit still, but to live it out.