Holding the Tension Within

For decades, I chased perfection.

No matter how hard I tried, I always came up short. I missed the mark in almost everything. I compared myself to others constantly, wanting to be something I could never be.

No matter how much I worked out, I would never look like a Victoria’s Secret supermodel.
No matter how much I studied, I would never be Einstein or change the world with a single thought.

I kept chasing an impossible standard, and every failure only reinforced the lies I believed about myself.

Perfection became the measuring stick-and I never measured up.

Eventually, the frustration became unbearable. The friction inside of me was intense. I was exhausted from trying to be flawless and terrified of making mistakes. When perfection feels unreachable, you eventually stop trying altogether.

One day, in the middle of that wrestling with self and internal frustration, I turned inward and cried out to God.

I heard something that cause me to shift and changed everything.

Rebecca, you have to learn how to hold the tension within yourself.

That was it.

God showed me something I had never been able to hold before-that two things could be true at the same time.

Spiritually, I could not be any more divinely perfect.
Humanly, I would always be flawed.

That realization set me free in a million different ways and continues to.

My spirit is whole, complete, lacking nothing.
My humanity is growing, learning, making mistakes.

Both are true.
Both exist together.

God showed me that I had spent most of my life taking my spiritual perfection and trying to force my human self to live up to it-as if my humanity was supposed to be flawless too. But that was never the design.

There are two parts of me.

There is the spiritual being of Rebecca—complete, creative, connected, whole.
And there is the human Rebecca—learning, stumbling, growing, and becoming.

I had to stop fighting my humanity and start working with it.

Holding the tension meant allowing myself to be human without shame.
It meant giving myself grace instead of judgment.
It meant accepting that mistakes don’t mean anything about my worth—they simply mean I am human.

Once I learned to hold both truths at the same time—spiritually perfect and humanly flawed—something balanced inside of me.

Peace replaced pressure.
Grace replaced shame.

I no longer had to be angry or internally frustrated with myself for being human.
And I no longer had to deny the divine perfection that lives within me.

The perfection of God-creativity, wisdom, love-already exists inside of me.
My role is not to become perfect, but to let that perfection express itself through my very human life.

Holding the tension changed everything.

Ponder & Reflect

Where in your life have you been demanding perfection from your humanity?

Have you been measuring your worth by standards you were never meant to meet?

What if the tension you feel inside is not failure, but simply the meeting place between your divine nature and your human growth?

Can you allow both to exist?

Can you honor the part of you that is already whole, while also giving grace to the part of you that is still learning?

Where might peace enter your life if you stopped fighting your humanity and began walking with it?

Perhaps the invitation is not to become perfect, but to let the perfection already placed within you gently express itself through a very human life.

Take a moment to sit with that tension.

There may be more grace there than you realize

Rebecca Dawn