You’re standing in the middle of church during worship and a few rows ahead of you, you notice the Pastor’s Wife. She seems so happy, so put together, and you find yourself admiring her perfection. Nothing ever seems to be wrong in her life and you wonder what it’s like to have it all together. You sit there thinking of the day when you finally are ready to be involved in ministry. The day when you finally have your life together enough to impact the lives of other people like she does. There has to be a day when your life doesn’t seem so messy, and so you hold on to that and continue there hidden away until you’ve got your stuff together.

Oh, what a lie we hold on to when we think that being able to minister to others is about having everything figured out. We forget that the beauty of what God does in our lives is the sole fact that He uses broken people. He doesn’t ask us to have it all together, He doesn’t require that we figure our mess out, He just asks that we give our mess to Him. He loves us in the middle of our brokenness. In the middle of our imperfection He uses us. It’s beautiful really, we are all broken people and God just uses us to help broken people.

When I got hit with Postpartum anxiety I felt at a loss. Something within me wasn’t right. I wasn’t normal and I wasn’t myself. It felt wrong to be in ministry. How could I spend all this time pouring into the lives of children when my life wasn’t perfect? I fell into the trap of perfection. I’ve never thought I have had it all together. I know that I am supposed to be continuously growing. But I’ve never felt like I just didn’t have anything to offer. But when you’re in the midst of something so paralyzing as anxiety, so crippling, it’s easy to feel like you have no right to be ministering to others. I was in a mess, and I didn’t feel like it was right to minister in the middle of my mess.

What a lie of the enemy.

The enemy wants to use circumstances in our life to paralyze us and cause us to miss out on the opportunities that God has for us. The enemy wants us to buy into the idea that our lives aren’t perfect enough to make a difference. He wants to use our past, or our current struggles, to hold us in bondage from sharing the power of Christ in our lives.

Before I go any further, I do believe there are times in our life where ministering to others isn’t wise. There are times that we truly need to work on things within us so that we can have the right heart when ministering to others. But there are also times that the enemy wants to take the bumps in the road and use them to pull us out of the body of Christ and out of who God is calling us to share His love with. Don’t allow those rocky seasons to make you feel like you have nothing to give. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to have life all figured out to make a difference. You are more than your past and more than your current life circumstances. God can use you in the midst of anything.

So give Him your mess, let Him use you. Don’t place this unnecessary pressure of perfection on yourself. Because even the pastor’s wife, even the children’s pastors wife, have times where they feel like they have nothing to give, when they feel like they are far from perfect, yet God continues to use them. God uses broken people to reach broken people, because it’s about Him, not about us.