Imperfectly In Him

This is how I signed an email recently. I was up early and trying to get a million things done before my precious (busy, needy) children woke up. I was sending out some emails, and since two of them were for the same thing, I reused the first email to do the second. Only, while I was in the midst of it I heard by baby (now 1, but still a baby) wake up and begin fussing for me. I thought, "Let me get this finished. Then, if she doesn't go back to sleep, at least I'll have it done." So I rushed through it and forgot to change something. Something that made it obvious that it was a copy. I realized it (with an audible groan) while I was nursing. Little one did go back to bed and back to sleep. I headed back to the computer and whipped up a new email.

I humbly apologized and explained what happened. In the end, 'sincerely' or 'thank you' or any other salutation didn't feel right. Suddenly (it must have been God-inspired) the phrase 'Imperfectly In Him' hit me. It was so true and the most appropriate thing I could have said. And what do you know? Out of the two emails I sent, this was the one I heard back from immediately - and it was positive (I am tentatively booked for 4 MOPS speaking engagments!)

What else I got out of it was the reinforcement of a lesson God is constantly teaching me: how imperfect I am. Not that I ever thought I was perfect, but I most definitely have not always seen myself through God's eyes.

I've been familiar with Romans 3:23 for a long time - "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" - but sometimes I see only certain things as sin.I judge myself more by the worlds standards than by God's. However, as my vision of myself becomes clearer and clearer, I grasp not only that God made me "wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14), but I am a sinner, dead in my sin, except for the grace poured out on my by God.