Unwrapped :: Still Faithful

My week has been filled with snot tissues and pine needle throat and hacking up a lung coughing
A lot.
Of all of the above.

I have been inside of these four walls for days now.
Life has felt very small.
And slow.
And still.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this yuckiness, I spent an hour on the phone with my dear pal, Annie, cause after all there is only SO much quiet an extrovert can take pine-needle throat and foggy-bottom head notwithstanding.

Saying no to the things on my plate this week were not easy.
I am too hard on myself apparently.
That is what my dad always told me.
And he is right.

But I feel like I am still learning how to give myself grace.
Even when I know I probably let some people down or disappointed them or slacked on my "duties."
This years-long journey of listening to my body and not being superwoman often finds me frustrated with my own inability to cope with the changing seasons of this life.

"What do you mean I cannot say yes to everything and everyone all the time? 

Is there something TRULY wrong with that?"

I am daily letting go of perfectionism, only to...and let me be REAL honest here...turn right back around and pick it back up two seconds later. C'mon. The fact that it is two WHOLE seconds now is a miracle in itself. I used to have Olympic gold medal winner speed in grabbing that perfectionism close to my breast.

I am a work in progress.

A song and verse come to mind swiftly as I type those words...

♫ He's still working on me.
To make me what I ought to be.
It took Him just a week
to make the moon and the stars
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars
How loving and patient He must be
He's still working on me. ♫

He who began a good work in me is faithful to complete it...

Philippians 1:6

I have been thinking a lot about what next year holds.
The horizon looks long and wide and while that should be is exciting,
to tell you the truth,
I am terrified.

I feel underprepared and that is never happiness for a girl like me.
But this week reminded me that sometimes I have to be alone and still and quiet to remember who He is even when I am not actively seeking to know. He is faithful to show up and to change me and to complete the work He starts and to give me the tools I need when I need them.

So I am tenderly, with trembling hands, unwrapping the gift of His faithfulness in the smallness of my week.

Linking up with Tuesdays Unwrapped, Imperfect Prose, and Thought-Provoking Thursday.