The Hidden Identity Crisis Behind Perfectionism (Pt 1/2) | 025

April Farlow Resources:

Instagram

Facebook

Website

Book:  Pieces of You 

Yorkshire Publishing

Lydia's Place

My guest, leadership trainer, speaker, and author April Farlow, joins me for a powerful conversation about how the beliefs we carry about ourselves shape the way we show up in our faith, our relationships, and our calling.

Together we unpack why so many successful women quietly wrestle with questions like:

• Who did God really create me to be?
• Why do I feel like I'm constantly measuring myself against everyone else?
• Why is my inner voice so much harsher than the way I speak to others?

Through stories, personal experiences, and practical insights, we explore how comparison, expectations, and internal narratives can distort our understanding of who we are in Christ.

April also shares a revealing exercise she once did with a group of accomplished women that exposed the powerful gap between how we see ourselves and how we see others—and what that reveals about the lies many of us have unknowingly believed for years.

If you've ever felt caught between who you think you should be and who God actually created you to be, this conversation will help you begin untangling those voices and rediscovering the freedom that comes from living out of your true identity.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why perfectionism often masks a deeper identity struggle
 • The internal narratives that shape how we see ourselves
 • How comparison fuels insecurity and self-criticism
 • The difference between performing for worth and living from identity
 • Practical ways to begin rediscovering who God created you to be

This is Part 1 of my conversa

🌐 Connect with Lenee' Pezzano and The Redeemed Perfectionist

        👥 Find Your People -- Join The Redeemed Perfectionist Facebook
         Community: The Redeemed Perfectionist | Facebook
        📖 Embrace Grace: Discover You Will Make Mistakes       
         https://amzn.to/4hKwhpW
        🔗 Start Your Journey – Explore Resources & More
          https://www.leneepezzano.com/
        📱 Let's Connect - Follow along on Instagram:
         https://www.instagram.com/leneepezzano/
        📞Ask Lenee' Anything!: https://www.speakpipe.com/LeneePezzano 
        💰Show support:  The Redeemed Perfectionist | Where Grace Meets Grit: Healing the Perfectionist Heart | Patreon

Transcript

Scriptures referenced:  

Genesis 1:27, 2 Cor 5:17, Romans 8:15

The Hidden Identity Crisis Behind Perfectionism (Pt 1) | 025

There is a trend happening in a lot of Christian realms right now that has to do with helping you find your identity in Christ. If I asked you the question, who did God create you to be, what would be your answer? And I'm referring to the real answer, the one you've discovered when everything is stripped away and you're left with just you and silence.  

Not the one where you are somebody trying to please everybody around you or the one who your career says you are. And definitely not the one your inner critic says you should become, but the one whose voice matters, who feels comfortable in her own skin. Who is secure enough with her current state that she can genuinely celebrate with others who she once compared herself to because she knows she's enough.

Now, maybe you haven't met her yet, and that's okay. Today's conversation is gonna shine a light on something many women rarely talk 

[00:01:00] about out loud, and that's the voices we carry about ourselves. Today I am joined by April Farlow, a speaker, author, coach, and leadership trainer who has spent more than two decades helping individuals and organizations discover their voice, clarify their values, and lead with authenticity.

April's background includes over 20 years in corporate training and leadership development where she has worked with organizations ranging from small teams to major companies and institutions such as J&J or UPS and Chick-fil-A and even the US Air Force. In addition to her corporate work, April's also a faith-based speaker and author of the book pieces of you where she explores how our identity is shaped by our experiences.

And ultimately restored when we understand who we are in light of whose we are. Her passion for identity and personal development 

[00:02:00] is also expressed through Lydia's Place, a nonprofit she founded to support young adults who have experienced foster care or homelessness through housing, mentorship, and practical support.

And what I love about April's perspective, is she brings together corporate leadership experience, real life, personal transformation, and a deep faith foundation to help us move from performing from who we think we should be to living authentically from who God created us to be. So many of us have spent our lives trying to be who authority figures expected, who culture applauded, who the church praised, or who we thought God demanded instead of discovering who he actually created us to be. And somewhere along the way we start believing the lies: 

[00:03:00] I'm not enough. I'm too much. I'm failing. I'm behind. I'm not doing it right. And those voices slowly become the internal script of our identity. 

Hey friend, welcome to the Redeemed Perfectionist podcast. If you are new here, I'm your host, Lenee’ Pezzano, and like many of our listeners, I defined my worth and identity by what I could produce and how well I could perform. For years, I concluded that if things were going well, it must be because I did something right, and if things were going not so well, I must have been the cause.

Perfectionism became my protection, but it also became my prison. And I'm here to expose the lies that the enemy planted in the garden of your soul and empower you with truth to help set you free. So, today's conversation explores a powerful question: how do we move from performing an identity to actually living from the one God gave us?

[00:04:00] And by the end of the episode, my hope is that you begin to see how many of the beliefs you carry about yourself may not actually be true, and why comparison and perfectionism distort identity, and how discovering your God-given identity brings freedom, peace, and confidence. 

And if I could boldly ask a favor?  Will you share this with a friend who may have similar struggles and let's give God the opportunity to multiply his seed in the earth?

 MUSIC

Audio Only - All Participants: Welcome to the Redeemed Perfectionist podcast. I am so excited to have you today. and I have to tell you, listeners, today we are gonna talk a lot about identity. Now, here's the fun fact, and April doesn't even know that I planned on doing this either.

As my listeners, you know, I love words and I 

[00:05:00] love to do a bit of a study because there are certain words that we use time and time again to the point that they become almost cliche. But do we really understand what we're talking about? And so, before we dive into this concept of your identity in the Lord, I wanted to dive a little bit into identity and open us up with that before we start interviewing April today. 

So, April, if you don't mind, I'd like to share just some things that I learned along the way as I was looking into this. Is that good with you? Absolutely, yes. Yeah. So interestingly enough, the English word identity does not originate in the Bible. So, it developed through Latin and then later English philosophy, but it was derived from what means the same. 

So, it has this idea of sameness or the fact of being the same person or thing. the sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances.

[00:06:00] Now we know that the Bible didn't have the word identity in it, though it does have the concept of it. So, whether you're looking at Old Testament Hebrew, certain portions in Aramaic or the Greek in the New Testament you're not gonna find the actual modern psychological term identity.

But the Bible addresses the concept through few related ideas. So, here's what I wanna share today. 

So, image and likeness, right? That's the first concept. Genesis 1:27. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female, He created them. So, the key Hebrew words there are rooted in image and likeness.  So those basically communicate that human beings reflect God's nature. 

A mentor years ago told me that the word name means nature. So, if you're coming in the name of something, you're coming in its nature. And then of course we know that a name often expresses.

[00:07:00] identity, character, calling.  The Lord took names very seriously, and whenever there was a name change, that represented a transformation of identity or mission.  We have Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Saul to Paul. Those are some examples. 

And then there's this concept of new creation. In the New Testament, identity language appears through new birth and new creation themes.

Like in 2 Corinthians 5:17, if anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is passed away, behold the new has come. So, this speaks to somebody who, becomes in Christ, identity in Christ basically. 

Another biblical framework that's major in scripture has to do with sonship or adoption.  Romans 8:15, you receive the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry, Abba, Father. So, this describes the Believer status and relationship with God, which functions similarly to identity language today. 

[00:08:00] So why do Christians use the word identity today? It's a modern theological shorthand used by teachers to summarize biblical truths such as being created in God's image, becoming a new creation, being adopted as sons and daughters, and belonging to Christ.

I say all that because there's a deeper question behind the word identity, and it's really about who did God create you to be? And I just wanted to emphasize some of that because for me, as I was reading that and studying it, I don't know, it just took things to a deeper level that when we say our identity is in the Lord it's in his likeness.

It's being one with Him. It's learning to be one with Him. It's finding out who you were created to be, 

[00:09:00] aside from anybody else, and aside from what anyone else thinks you should be. Which starts getting us into root belief systems around perfectionism. So let me pause there. And April, let me just ask you, when you hear this, what bubbles up for you? 

April:  It makes me, excited when I'm meeting someone for the first time and I'm taking notes as you do the intro. So, what a great foundation for what we're gonna talk about today. Yeah. What bubbles up for me so quickly in what you were just saying is that my background is in corporate training, and so when I'm introducing identity and faith I'm still typically grounded very much in exercises and things that I've done in a corporate environment.

Yeah. Which we have in common in, in our work. When I was preparing to write the book Pieces of You, I gathered 30 women and we met for three months. And so, I was throwing out exercises to see 

[00:10:00] where it would land. And it was fun for me when the exercise did not go as I thought it would. And so, as you were describing that and you were talking about who did God create you to be?

There was an evening when I had big white poster boards all over the walls. And I had the women write down in the room, when you get really quiet and you're speaking to yourself, what are you saying? Ugh, how do you describe yourself? Wow. And I had them write down one idea per post-it note and then go put all of their post-it notes on a board.

Just spread out everywhere. Okay. Okay. And I don't know what I expected them to write, but it broke my heart to walk around the room and the things that I saw people saying about themselves.  By the way, I invited my rockstar friends to come to this. This was not like, I didn't just go out and grab random people.

I invited people that I thought 

[00:11:00] really could help move the needle for me in my own identity as I wrote this book. Yeah. So, I'm looking at the Post-It notes that they have written about themselves and they're saying things like, too prissy, too busy, not a good mom. They're saying that I'm a workaholic, or they're saying I'm not a mom, and so I don't have that identity.

Two that really stood out to me:  I had invited my mom to be a part of the group, and my mom was a caretaker for my father for 20 years. And I saw written on the board, not as much fun as I used to be. Ugh. Now since my dad has passed away, my mom goes to adult camps, takes harp lessons, line dances, does all the fun things.

It was a season she was in. Gotcha. And it's so easy, I think, for us to misplace the season that we're in with the identity of who God has called us to be. Amen. 

[00:12:00] One more that just stood out to me in the most profound way. I have a daughter who joined our family from Lagos, Nigeria. And to know her, she's truly an angel on earth. I don't know any other way to describe her. 

We were not looking to bring someone into our family. She's that special. Aw. On the board. She had written not good enough to make a friend. Wow. Now, when I tell you about Maria, she is magnetic. Wow. When she comes home from college, I have to do her schedule for her because everyone wants to see her.  Everyone wants a piece of time with Maria. 

Where she was going with that when I dug deeper is that she was in college classes and trying to blend in with people who had a very different upbringing and whose life circumstance had looked vastly different. So, she couldn't relate with people her own age in that season of life 

[00:13:00] because they're talking about breaking up with their boyfriend and that being the greatest stress in life.

And Maria had seen starving people. And so she couldn't relate. So, with that said, I just, I bring that up to say we form this identity, these voices as we speak to ourselves that are so contradictory Yeah. to who we are in Christ. Yeah. And that was a wakeup call for me.

Wow. And so a lot of your work centers on identity and on helping especially young people find their voices, was that what first made you realize those two things are deeply connected? Or maybe take us back to the beginning for you when these things became so important for you and you knew this was your mission.

I think it's important to go back in time when I was 14 years old. I took my very first Dale Carnegie course. My mom was a Dale Carnegie instructor. And so, she literally, actually I 

[00:14:00] took classes underneath her leadership sitting on the couch with my baby dolls when I was eight. Amen. But I took my first actual class when I was 14.

So, I've been around leadership, training, and development really my whole life. Yeah. At 22, you're for the first time figuring out who you are, really like out on your own, independent of your parents or what your professors say, or anything like that. I was already training to be a Dale Carnegie instructor, so I'm hearing people ask questions at a very young age about, I'm going to work every day, but who am I?

What difference does any of this make? And so, it really struck me then and then I had my own identity crisis and in my later twenties, and it made me ask questions that many of my friends in their forties and fifties are asking now. Yeah. And so, I think sometimes that, that crack in who we thought we are, or that fracture in our own story, 

[00:15:00] forces us to look deeper than our role, deeper than our circumstance and figure out who in the world am I right?

And who did God call me to be uniquely? 

And can we go a little deeper? Are you able to share more about that identity crisis for you? 

Absolutely. So I'll paint the picture for you. I'm 26 years old. I am in a marriage that is failing and did not believe in divorce.  And so I was going to marriage counseling two days a week one day a week by myself one day a week with him saying, we are going to fight this out. Like we are going to fight for this marriage. We are going to make it work. And in the end, it became very clear that was not gonna happen.

And when we talk about identity, I can share the moment that I knew that we were in our marriage counseling and we've done a year of this and really made very little progress. 

[00:16:00] And so the counselor says to us, This week, I want you to write down your absolutes. What has to happen? What are the absolutes?

So, we both come into this session with our paper of our absolutes. Yeah. And the counselor says to us, we're finished here. There's nothing else we can do, because we could not compromise. Wow. We had vastly different absolutes. And so, it was a fracture for me. I did not believe in divorce. I didn't believe in any of this.

Yeah. Couple that with the fact that I'm teaching classes every week on how to win friends and influence people. How to build relationships. And the pivotal moment for me, I was in Nonan, Georgia teaching a class as a small community, and so there weren't many event locations. And so we were actually hosting this in a community center, this Dale Carnegie class.

[00:17:00] And I was literally standing underneath the wedding arches that had been set up for the weekend teaching how to win friends and influence people while behind the scenes, literally everything was falling apart. Oh, my word. And the clarity that came in that season of this is incongruent. Yeah. And so I became a student of everything I had been teaching.

Come on. So good. I was like, I can no longer teach something that I am struggling with myself. Sure. And I think that's when I became a really good instructor. Because I was no longer teaching theories. I was no longer teaching principles or things out of the book. I was delving into the content and dissecting it for myself.

And how would that work? Yeah. And I just had to rebuild from that point forward. 

Lenee’:  That's experiential knowledge. A mentor in my life once said, God has to do it to you before he can do it through you. I use the analogy, a lot of giving birth and the 

[00:18:00] reality is a seed is planted inside you, and then that seed begins to grow. And of course you cultivate it, but it's the Lord's work in you that's growing. And He gives the increase, scripture says, and then that seed as it grows is stretching you and pushing you and reshaping you and pushing some things out of the way. And all these analogies that just are so parallel to the spiritual ways of God and patterns of God and all of that has to happen in you before you can give birth. And then you give birth to that thing.

And so that's what I hear in that reality of theory to practical application. And now you, I always say I know it in my knower because now it's become real. It's become life. It is so true. 

April:  You really made me think of something as you're describing

[00:19:00] My now husband and I live on a mini farm, and we decided to try gardening.  Which I had a lot to learn, but one of the things that my mother-in-law was explaining to me as we were talking about planting the garden is that the seeds, we would plant three seeds and we would wait for the little seedling to pop up and then pluck out two of them so that the one would be strong enough to grow and have all of the nutrients from the soil. Yes. 

And I think that we have to do that in our own life. Yeah, that's right. So that we think we can be all the things right. We think that we can, but we really have to do some plucking out. That's right. To get focused on who God's called us to be.

I relate to that. I bought one of those hydroponic towers that you can do indoor gardening with. And as I followed their advice on how to do this, that was the same thing. As soon as the seedlings started, after so many weeks, they wanted you to then cut off all but one.

[00:20:00] And I had a really, I had a really hard time doing that because here's the thing, all the seedlings were good, but again, a quote I often use is that good is the enemy of better and better is the enemy of best. And when we are trying to do all the things, we are diluting all of them. And we're deluding our ability to walk in the thing that God has called us to.

And for me as He continues to ask me to lay certain things down and only focus on that thing He's called me to. It's a discipline and it's hard, but the fruit of it then is peace, is confidence. I can maintain joy as I'm going through life because I'm only doing that which He's calling me to do, and that's where I put all my energy.

And so, I'm staying abiding in Him. 

[00:21:00] I'm still receiving his power as my power source. And that's what's keeping me going. And so again, our listeners, especially those who struggled with perfectionism. Because at the root of perfectionism, we're still trying to validate who we are through what we perform and how we perform.

It's hard to put things down because they all make us feel valid, if that makes sense. They do. 

April:  And something that you're describing is really coming up in me right now that is that during that season of divorce, I had always felt like if I told you I was going to do something, I had to do it. Yes. Oh my gosh.  Yes. So, I committed. I will be there. Now also, I have had migraine headaches my entire life. And so, during that season, I can remember both physically and emotionally struggling. 

[00:22:00] Yeah. And being invited to go somewhere. And everything in me was I told them I would go and so I have to follow through.

Yeah. And I physically couldn't do it in that season. Wow. Yeah. Both. Both because I would emotionally feel like I was not going to be present with the person. Yeah. And then physically I was having migraine headaches, the beauty that came in my mid-twenties from realizing that I could call someone and say, I'm not gonna be able to make it tonight.

And the earth did not shatter. And typically, they went on without me and had a great evening with the rest of the people who were going to go. But it was freedom in realizing that I don't have to be all things to all people. And that in sometimes me letting someone know I'm not able. gave them freedom that when they are not able to come, they could call and do the same to me.

Very good point. 

[00:23:00] And I don't think that I got that until I had an identity crisis to figure it out. Yeah. 

So, when you talk about who you are versus who you think you have to be, what has that meant to you and to the people you serve? 

April:  Let me circle back to that first exercise. 'cause I think that's really important.

So, I asked the women to describe themselves and they wrote down such negative things. Sure. And let me go back. They even said things like, I'm too chur. Too churchy too. Too per, and, but I asked them to flip the script and so the next question that I asked them was, right now on the same post-it notes, but they were a different color.

Describe your best friend. And the descriptions were amazing. Great mom, excellent communicator. So committed, such a leader. And I'm like, this is who you are. 

[00:24:00] You just couldn't see it in yourself. Sure. And somehow I think, there's this humility that we ask people to carry and that is great in a lot of circumstances, but in our own voice, in our own head, it can really work against us. Yep. Yep. 

Lenee’:  I actually have found the Lord moving in me, giving words to other people, especially women, through the years of the concept that you're talking about it, I call it a false humility.

If life is a spectrum, there's people that might be on that spectrum that are full of pride and they just love to brag about themselves. And of course scripture says, let another man brag about you. Yes. Not your own lips. Yes. But then there's the people who I more relate to on the spectrum where we're so beat down.  We're full of shame. We don't feel we're worth anything. We haven't been affirmed enough in life and therefore we don't affirm ourselves 

[00:25:00] that it's important and actually very freeing for us to flip that negative script and own who Jesus says we are in Him. It's not a prideful thing, it's an identity-claiming, taking-back-our-authority kind of thing.

To the outsider looking in, you might think it's all the same. No, this has to do with heart posture and motive and where somebody actually is.  

April:  And we've all been around someone who's gotten a hold of that. Yeah. Yeah. And they glow differently. Yeah. And we're drawn to them. Yeah. We're drawn to that person.

Absolutely. One of the things that came out of that same women's group of exercises yeah. is that I asked people to think of what are their values? And so, what is the tension that comes between you? Yeah. And what drives you, your behaviors. And the thing that some of the women shared with me after that, I think is a great point here, 

[00:26:00] is that when they could name what their values are, it freed them from comparing themselves to everyone else.

So, I can give an example of that. I think it would be the coolest thing ever to have dinner on the table for my family. Every night of the week. But I hate cooking like loath it. And my children are competitive dancers and so they don't get home till eight o'clock, a lot of nights. Ugh.

But I would look on social media at perfectly curated meals that other people were cooking and feel like a failure myself. Oh my goodness. And I realized when I did a values exercise, not just with myself, but with my whole family, I'm dorky that way.  We do corporate training things. Absolutely. I would too. 

But when we put that out there as a family and said, who are we? It made me realize that I didn't really crave a perfectly curated dinner. I craved that we are deeply connected in the time that would've been around the dinner table. Wow.

[00:27:00] And when I realized that we had that like. When my kids would describe our family doing the values exercise, we are nailing that part being, come on, connected. Yeah. I just was framing it in a way that I had to have a meal on the table to get the connection. Now when I realize I have what I was craving with the connection, yes.

I can look at other people's posts about the meals that they're preparing and be like, go girl. That's awesome. Yes. Looks delicious. Hope you cook it for me sometime, and not feel as though I have to compare. I also would love to run marathons with my family. I think it'd be really cool.

Even five Ks would be great. Yeah. I'm not a runner and I'm never going to be, and my kids really aren't runners either. Yeah. So, I can see other people exercising and visiting national parks and running and be like, that's awesome. Yeah. And that's who you are. But that's not who I am. Okay. 

[00:28:00] And see that it's so good because I call it the should storm.

Yes. That shames you. It's the should shaming and we get there quickly. We look around and because we haven't yet come into the security. We haven't given ourselves permission to be ourselves and discover who that is. Then we are constantly feeling like we're not enough. And then it just adds to your point, we look at social media, we look at people and we're constantly, sometimes it happens in milliseconds at a subconscious level where we had just compared ourself to somebody.

And we already in our own mind, reinforce this idea that we're a failure and we're not enough. Absolutely. and I want the listener to really catch what just happened with you, there was a point where you began to lean into, wait, what do I even want? What do I even think?

What do I even believe? And give yourself permission to say, 

[00:29:00] this is who I am today. I'm not gonna grade. 'cause that inner critic, we can constantly grade ourselves. We're just Yes. Just start with who am I today? What are my beliefs? What do I like today? and then, Lord, if any of this is incongruent with your nature, then form the new nature in me.

But for today, this is where I am with you. And I still love you. I still wanna be with you, but I can't pretend to be something I'm not, or be somewhere I'm not, I tell people, the scripture says there will be a day when we worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. I believe that when you come just as you are, which is what he gives us permission to do, it is a form of worship.

We're coming just as we are. It's truth. Here's my truth. And it's a form of worship. And that's what he's looking for to start with. He'll shape, he's the potter. 

[00:30:00] He'll do the work in us. We just have to keep positioning ourself to receive that connection with Him. 

So I just love, like you just described, what I try to teach people all the time in terms of how to find your security in Him and how to begin to find your voice.  Because for me, through the years, I had no clue who I was. I was too busy trying to be who everybody else wanted me to be. Yes. Or who I thought the world wanted me to be, or who I even thought God wanted me to be based on standards He wasn't setting. Yes, but the pressure of the world and the enemy that was all coming in and defining things for me.

It's so powerful. 

April:  One of my mentors in training described something that I think you just really touched, and he would describe receiving a gift and he would talk about giving gifts to his wife. And that he would go to the store and really spend time trying to find the perfect gift for her.

[00:31:00] But it wasn't what she had in mind. It was the wrong color, the wrong si, there was be something wrong and that no matter what she would want to go and return it. And he said, but that really took away from the effort I put in to giving her the gift. Ugh. But his analogy was, how do you think the Lord feels?

When He gives us a gift in who we are or in a talent or in something that is unique about us and we return it because it didn't look like what everybody else had?

Lenee’: God just used you in my own life ‘cause what bubbles up for me… I've struggled my whole life with body dysmorphia.

And so I'm never thin enough. I'm never this enough. I'm never that enough. And unfortunately, I look back and I didn't get to enjoy what I actually did have when I had it, because my lens was so far gone. And if I'm honest, it's the one stronghold that God is still chipping away at.

 I've come a long way, but it's still hard. And the older I get, the harder 

[00:32:00] it is. But it's like what you're saying how does it make the Lord feel when I constantly communicate to him that what he created is too ugly, too fat, too this, too that should look differently?

April: One of my dear friends, Natasha, has Vitilago. And she spent so long thinking about her spots. By the way, she's an incredible leader. She leads and does similar work to what I do, but what happened to her over the years has been so beautiful to watch because she took the gift God had given her.

Yeah. And one of the things she realized is that she stands out. People would notice her skin. Yes. And someone framed that for her differently and said, oh, you have God's camouflage. Ugh. And all of a sudden she realized that God created her the way that he did and made her beautiful.

And she's written articles for Forbes Magazine. Now, one of the things that she 

[00:33:00] writes about is when I stand out, where God has put me, when I live into who I have been called to live into, then I don't have to fly, be below the radar, right? I can live fully in who I am, the way I look, the way I feel.but in my gifting as well.

Lenee’:  I just finished a book by Dale Mast called, And David Perceived He Was King. And it was just this idea that, there was a point where the Lord, through a person told David he was gonna be the king and. Then of course it took years for God to shape David before he entered in fully to that.

But along that journey, if David would have not believed in who God called him to be, he would've shown up differently in the process of getting to King. And so that's profound. It isn't that profound?

[00:34:00] That is profound. Think about the fight with Goliath and think about the confidence he carried.

How differently would that fight have looked and what might have been the outcome if David would've shown up not believing in who he was and in who his God was? Wow. It wrecked me. It wrecked me and I keep saying, I'm done negotiating my worth. My greatest sin, I believe has been unbelief.

People, they talk about perfectionism being a pride thing because it's self-preservation and it's trying to do life on your own to protect yourself. And I say that's part of it. But for me, underneath even that was fear and unbelief. I was driven by fear. Again, as the listeners listen to this conversation and you give the testimony of your friend, which is so beautiful, 

[00:35:00] I hope that folks are shifting inside that sparks are being thrown inside your soul and creating faith to say, oh my word, I've been showing up in a way of unbelief, or I've been showing up in a way of death.  Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Where am I making agreements with the enemy or with death in mind, in word, and in deed?  Where am I thinking death? Where am I speaking death? Where am I showing up? That's still feeding those lies, right? Profound. We could go on and on about that clearly. So, April, why do you think so many women struggle with knowing who they truly are?  I mean, have you given that much thought, what have you seen through the years? 

You really made me think just a moment ago talking about body image. 

[00:36:00] And that has not been a struggle of mine, but I've had a different struggle and that is that I look around at other women and they're dressed in a way that is fashionable.  Yeah. and the trendy or whatever. And I am not that, like not at all so much. So let me paint a picture for you. I because I speak on stages, I need to look like I have the outfit. And so, I finally started going to this local boutique that will dress you. And I went so much, I became friends with one of the ladies who works there, Jill.

And finally I said to her, I need you to come home with me and come to my closet and I need you to tell me what works and what doesn't. Yeah. So, we are in my closet and she would put an outfit together and she would say, okay, you could wear this and then you could change it. This or this.

I said no. I said, we're gonna take a picture and this is the way I'm gonna wear it. 'cause I don't have the visual to get creative on this. So literally now when I'm gonna dress myself, 

[00:37:00] I often go through my phone. I have a, an album that's this is what I wear. And it has helped me have a framework for this.

This works because I'm clueless when it comes to that. I love it. I think now people see me sometimes and they'll say, I like your outfit. And it's laughable to me because I'm like I didn't have that, but whatever. I learned it along the way and I get it right sometimes. Not all of the time, but she said something, throughout that, show me what you like.  And I almost couldn't do it. Yeah. Show me what I like. But then she would show me something and I would say, not that. Nice. And I think sometimes we can begin to figure out our identity. Yes. when we say, not that. 

I, and I was just about to ask you, what does it look like to begin to move from that performance mode, to actually living from identity?

[00:38:00] Because we have today, we've spoken as if you should already know these things, but you're helping us go way back to the steps before the steps to help women really begin to find out who they are. So yeah, let's lean into that. One thing that someone said to me along the way is April, you can be anything, but you can't be everything.

And I needed to hear that. That's good. Because I wanted to get it all right. And. And an example of that in my own life, I would love, I talked about the marathon running, or I'd love to have dinner on the table. One of the things that I would love to have is just a neat and tidy house, but I'm not that my life is crazy.

I'm going a million miles a minute in 50 different directions. And when I look at someone who has the, the organization to the detail, I'm amazed, but I'm not that. Yeah. 

[00:39:00] And what I am, if you come into my house is a house full of people. Yes. It's a joke in our house that we should keep a guest book for how many people show up in our home on a regular basis.

I was just looking at our wifi router, and I was trying to figure out why our internet was moving so slowly. And I discovered that we had 171 logins for devices in our home. And that's just people who came here and said, let me log in on your wifi. So, I can do that. I can have all the people, and I love having all the people, but I can't do it and be perfectly neat and tidy all the time.

And so I think when we look at our identity in Christ, it is realizing that who you're called to be is not gonna look like everybody else, right? And who you're called to be really is when you feel you're most comfortable. Going back to the clothing in my closet, right? When I think about values and figuring out what are your values?

[00:40:00] A, a dear friend of mine, actually, Natasha, the one that I mentioned with the Vika, she describes that as go to your closet and pick out your most comfortable pair of jeans. Yeah. Not your, I'm gonna get dressed up Saturday night. Not your these might fit someday, but your, these are my go-to everyday comfortable jeans.

And that is where you find comfort. Yeah. And the same thing is true when you start looking at what are your values. Yeah. And who are you when you do that? And you find this is when I'm my most comfortable and, I think sometimes as an adult we can think I'm behind 'cause I didn't get it. All right.

Yep. Let me reframe that for the listener who's going well, I don't know. As an adult, you have already navigated so many obstacles and hurdles that when you sit down to try to figure it out, it's vastly different than a 22-year-old or the 26-year-old I was in identity crisis because you've already had a lot of renditions of yourself.

[00:41:00] To flip back and figure out when was I my most comfortable and, I'll give you a quick example of that values exercise that I think is really helpful. So I asked my kids, let's sit down together and all of us as a family, again I should take stock and post-it notes, write down who we are as a family, what's different about us, what's unique, and it was interesting to me that everybody used different words also at that time.

One of my daughters was really young, so it's like scribble scrabble on the paper. She was more telling me than what she was writing. But one of the things that they said is our house is always full of people and different people. And what my children had no idea when they said that is that my husband and I, when we got the keys to our home that we live in now, we didn't come in the house first.

We walked the perimeter of our property and we prayed that this would be a house of welcome. Yeah, we prayed that people would come here and feel like it was a home that they belonged in. Amen. 

[00:42:00] Years later we had a young man from Nigeria. We have a lot of Nigerians come to our house because of our daughter Maria.

And he quoted scripture and he said be mindful to entertain strangers as you may have entertained angels unawares. So when I come in with my kids and they say, our house, we welcome everyone. Yeah. They didn't know that we had prayed that. Yeah. But they saw the fruits of it. Yep. So, if you're right now as an adult and you don't know who you are, you're trying to figure this out.

Yeah. I would say look around yourself. Ask some people what's different. Yeah. What do I do that's different than other people? Not who do I wanna be? Yeah. Not who do I wish I had been? When am I most comfortable? Who am I? What's happening? Yeah. And lean in there. Yeah, start there. And I think it's important in the beginning too, when you're trying to navigate this, if you're there at the 

[00:43:00] beginning stages scripture says there's safety in a multitude of counselors.  And sometimes when you don't trust your own self yet and your own thoughts and your own decisions, it's really important to find a couple people you can trust who you know are going to lead you in the way of life and bounce these things off of them. And even in that, the Holy Spirit scripture says it's his job to lead us into all truth.

I have found at times I'll be bouncing things off of a couple of friends, and just by my expression of the thing out loud, holy Spirit nudges me as I'm talking. I start getting revelation of truth as I'm speaking the thing out loud. There have been times my friends have watched that process unfold to I will talk myself all the way in the circle and eventually get to the answer. And they didn't even say a word back to me and they laugh. They're like, I'm glad that I actually was here to help. 

[00:44:00] I'm like, no, just listening was very helpful, Lenee’. 

I think you just hit something that we must touch…that's the friend we can be to other people too. So, if you happen to be listening to this and you've got this figured out Yeah.  How do you help other people figure it out? Yeah. And I think we think we have to have the answers and I don't think that's true. We have to be present and be listeners. Yes. And most of us, if we give someone an opportunity to say it all out loud, they will figure it out on their own.  A hundred percent.

We just might ask questions and guide someone. Yeah. And I think that. When you start to figure out who you are, you want to have other people around you who know who they are. Amen. That's so good. And but you may get ahead of your friends, right? Uhhuh. And so if you are ahead of them becoming that bouncing board that, that safe place for them to describe all of the things Absolutely. helps them navigate the same thing. But I don't think we have to have the answers. 

[00:45:00] Yeah. I think we have to have the environment where they feel comfortable to flush it out that. That's profound. I had a gal, a very, a high-level. 'cause a lot of times I deal with high level, high achieving women. Again, you and I ee come from that corporate world.

Yes. We have been very successful. And they said to me one time, your superpower is that you bring us along the process. And they feel it's safe. They feel in the safe environment that they can express who they really are. And I'm like, I don't know how else to do it.

I've always been an external processor. I have to get it out. I've gotta talk it out. That's just how I process life. Yes. Whether it's journaling, which is how I navigated early in life. Or if it's just verbal processing. that's my mission, is create that safe environment where especially high achieving women have permission and have a safe place.  They can actually show up and confess what they're really struggling with. 

[00:46:00] They can take off the mask, they can take off the costumes, they can get off the stage. And let's just talk about where you really are. Let's start there. April:  I think that might be the crux of everything we're talking about today, and that is, we walk around, you can call it masks, sometimes I call it filters.

With the filters that we want people to see us through. Yeah. And that is not authentic. And I think when, what I have found myself is that when I am willing to take the filter off and be really real with someone, yeah. They are willing to do the same for me. Yeah. So I can't ask someone to remove the mask unless I go first.

Amen. And so I think when you're describing how your friends feel comfortable with you, and they say that it might be that you're willing to go first Yeah. And you're willing to not be perfect. Yeah. I keep mentioning my home, having a lot of people in it. I'll tell you one thing that I think people are drawn to at my house.

It's not perfect. 

[00:47:00] I just had 14 little girls over here doing a Bible study yesterday. They come twice a month. It's St. Patrick's Day coming up. I could have themed it out. I had Valentine's candy out and I also had some plates that I don't know where they were from. They didn't even all match paper plates that I had left over, but there's comfort there.

Yeah. That I'm not perfect and I'm not asking you to be perfect. Yeah. So, bring your real into this. I have found that invites people in. To go deeper with me in friendship. Yeah. I love that. And there's no problem getting it all right. So hear me, but when, if that's your calling and that's your gifting to theme it out and do everything Exactly.  Perfectly awesome. Yeah. Let me cheer you on in that. Yeah. It's just not necessary in friendship. Mm-hmm. 

Lenee’:  Well, if you've got the capacity to do it from a place that still brings you peace, and you're still connected with the Lord and thriving yes, go for it. But when, again, when the heart of the matter and the motive is 

[00:48:00] that you have to do it in order to be acceptable and found worthy you've missed the call.

It's a counterfeit gospel and that, that was really profound for me when the Lord began to, I think I shared this with you earlier. My listeners often hear me say, because I knew God as a punishing, like to me it was, I obeyed out of fear of punishment. I knew Him as the Lion, and then He started showing up in these tender, compassionate ways, particularly in my times of failure, and I would be so confused by that still small voice that was like, daughter, I'm not here to pound you over the head.

Come to me. I wanna help you. And so I say I started to know him as the Lamb. I saw that as a counterfeit at first, and so I had to really lean in and say, wait, I know the voice of God. He actually is more compassionate than I realized, and I've gotta start believing that. And then He took me to the Book of Galatians and what 

[00:49:00] started to again profoundly stand out to me was that I had been trying to justify myself through the Law.  And he asked the Galatians who cut in on you, and he calls it another gospel. And I was like, I've been following a counterfeit. Because there's always gonna be a counterfeit where there's the authentic. And for me, I was following another gospel. I had become saved in believing in what the Lord did for me.

Then I left grace at the point of salvation, I was trying to maintain my status with the Lord through my performance. 

April:  You're really pointing me back to that first exercise we talked about in this podcast. And I wanna share one revelation I had during that exercise. So again, I asked the women, describe yourself, your internal voice, describe your best friend.

And 29 women went negative when they wrote on the paper. 

[00:50:00] What I haven't mentioned yet is that I do a whole lot of work with kids who are aging out of foster care through a ministry that I started called Lydia's Place. And for the point of the exercise, I had invited only one of the kids from Lydia's place to be a part of that women's group.

Yeah, 29 women went negative. My one kid who had lived in her car, I met her through Lydia's Place, went positive and I asked her why. I could not get away without really becoming curious as to why did she go positive? Yeah. Everybody else went negative. Her story was harder. Not that we can compare stories, but I knew the horrors that she had lived through.

How did she go? Positive?

Lenee’:  How did she go? Positive. Whew. This feels like a good place to pause and I will tell you this next episode is gonna be just as rich as this one has been, and we're gonna talk about something that 

[00:51:00] I believe many high-achieving believers struggle with, especially perfectionists. Things like the difference between obedience and output and why God sometimes slows us down when we wanna accelerate that test of delay and how to learn what I like to call the pace of grace.

So, remember to tune in for the next episode.

That'll be just so chockfull of perspectives that will be empowering and I think a lot of listeners are gonna walk away realizing that identity in Christ isn't something we discover overnight. It's something that's refined through obedience, through seasons of growth and through learning to walk with God at that pace of grace.

We do have a Facebook community called the Redeemed Perfectionist Community, where we continue these conversations and create that safe space for women who are ready to break free from performance-driven faith, and discover God's grace in a deeper way. So, check us out on Facebook again, the link will be in the show notes.

[00:52:00] And if today has encouraged you, would you take a moment and follow the podcast, leave a review, share it with a friend?  All of those things that will help spread God's word. We want more people experiencing the freedom of walking with Him in grace!

MUSIC