The Bed That Broke Me
It Happened Over Something Small
And when I say small, this can feel embarrassing to even say.
My wife asked me to be more mindful about helping make the bed in the morning. Her love language is acts of service. She wasn’t feeling received. She wasn’t accusing. She was naming something real.
And something in me completely collapsed. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t made the bed, but that I hadn’t noticed how it was affecting her.
Panic. Grief. Shame. That familiar internal spiral. I hadn’t been perfect. I hadn’t noticed quickly enough. I hadn’t anticipated her need. I hadn’t been emotionally omniscient.
And suddenly I was face to face with the version of myself I’m always trying to outrun. The man who doesn’t quite get it. The man who lags behind. The man who is good, but never quite enough.
“It wasn’t really about the bed. It was about my perfectionism being shattered.”
And when my perfectionism is shattered, it brings its familiar friends to play: panic, grief, shame, justifying, intellectualizing, scheming for a plan, and finally quiet despair.
It’s a familiar internal spiral that my perfectionism hates to admit I ever struggle with.
She made her request in the kindest way possible.
And yet, even though I could hear her calm tone, I heard a different voice in my own head:
“You didn’t notice her emotional need quickly enough. You didn’t anticipate her needs. You weren’t emotionally omniscient. You failed.”
And suddenly I have to look my enemy face to face in the eyes that I’m always trying to outrun.
The man who doesn’t get it.
The man who isn’t aware.
The emotional slug.
A good man, maybe, but nothing more.
Just like the rest of the sad state of men I have made many vows never to become.
And yet here I am like Two-Face in Batman: feeling the inevitable pull to become the thing you have vowed to destroy.
And this all happened in about 30 seconds. It all happened so fast. Before I could think. Before I could take time to pray. Before any rational or spiritual thoughts had even had a chance to speak.
This reaction obviously had nothing to do with making a bed. It has to do with my perfectionism, my version of a good life, and where my sources of life come from.
The Subtlety of My Perfectionism
My perfectionism is very subtle if you know me personally. I tend to think of myself as a very gracious, empathetic, kind individual. I strive to embody a wise, compassionate presence in every interaction. Not perfectly, of course, but that is the desire of my heart.
And yet the irony is that same gentle spirit I try to show toward others I rarely allow myself to experience.
It’s like being a chef in your own restaurant. I spend all day cooking, plating, making every dish beautiful, full of flavor, alive. Everyone who comes in tastes it, enjoys it, leaves nourished. And me? I sit at my own table with a gray, soggy bowl of milk toast, tasting nothing.
Sometimes this perfect life of embodying perfection—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually—feels so close. But so far. That feeling of control keeps me running. Trying harder. Staying sharper. Monitoring responses. Reading the room. Measuring myself by how others feel after interacting with me.
But a thought came to me:
What if the grief of not being perfect was actually just a coping strategy, and the real grief was over not being able to receive unconditional love from God?
This is actually terrifying if you think about it.
Because unconditional love means I don’t control my belonging. And if I don’t control my belonging, then what am I standing on?
My Fig Leaf of Perfection
As men especially, we fear failure above all else
“This is every man’s deepest fear: to be exposed, to be found out, to be discovered as an impostor, and not really a man.”
And so what do we do to face that failure?
We don’t actually fight. We actually hide. Just like our original Dad, Adam.
We make our fig leaves. We make a facade, a character. We create an often beautiful mask that others will see and say:
“Now here’s an adequate man. This guy is the real stuff.”
We become posers. We pose strength through our work and achievement to avoid being exposed as not truly strong or capable.
And every fig leaf is quite elaborate. It is specially tailored to hide our fears of inadequacy.
That’s why mine is easy to miss. I don’t drive a humongous truck. I don’t have a loud, boisterous, command-the-room personality.
My fig leaf is to be perfect—to embody the perfect combination of strength, wisdom, and emotional and spiritual intelligence. Why? So that I survive. So that I could feel like I’m loved, seen, that I matter.
Because perfection, at least the way I learned it, is fragile. It only works as long as everyone around you is pleased. As long as no one is disappointed. As long as no one asks something of you that exposes the gap between who you are and who you think you’re supposed to be.
It’s like this scene in Whiplash, I see myself in every tense muscle and furious glance. Every mistake, every missed beat, is a threat to my sense of belonging. That’s how it feels when I’m living under the weight of my own fig leaves.
And inevitably when there’s a slip and a gap shows up, the whole thing collapses. I can feel it in my body when it happens. The rush. The shame. The need to explain myself. To justify. To fix it quickly so I can get back to feeling okay. Like my worth is hanging on the response I’m about to get.
My response to the approval of others and fear of failure is to construct an even more elaborate fig leaf of perfectionism.
Approval of man is the oxygen that I often breathe. But I’m always one step away from that approval being snatched from me.
And God uses these circumstances, as small as a request to make a bed, to expose that.
Shame can creep in even there. Dang it, God! I know I should have figured this out! I’ve been told the truth, why do I keep struggling with this? I feel like a dog who just ate a whole ham and now got caught with his tail between his legs.
I’m ready to get what I deserve.
And yet, God doesn’t give me what I think I deserve. He gives me grace.
Grace Is Scary
What’s funny is that unconditional grace and love are actually more threatening to me than my shame.
Because God’s grace actually threatens to shatter my entire system.
See, if God were to disapprove of me, then it feeds into my fig leaf system.
Because if I believe that I can be perfect, then I can have certainty. And if I can have certainty, then I can have belonging. And if I can have belonging, then I could actually rest.
But perfectionism has never given me rest. It just moves my finish line.
And so when I expect God to shame me for again “not getting it,” that would actually play into my fig leaf. I would then double down to make a new strategy to be perfect so that He would approve of me. And everything would be fine again. Until something else happens and I get exposed again. More fig leaves.
So God does something different. He strips me naked, taking away the fig leaf.
But He does it in such an upside-down way. He does it with grace.
He approaches me not because of what I’ve done to measure up, but precisely because I haven’t. He approaches me with the same heart He spoke to His Son, Jesus, when He said:
This is my beloved Son; in Him I am well pleased.
“Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved’. Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.”
Refusing to reject ourselves and actually receiving the name of “Beloved” that God calls us because of the sacrifice of Jesus alone is actually the most radical thing we could do.
Actually being willing to receive the grace that God has given me is actually the most exposing and dangerous thing God could do for me.
Wholeness, Not Perfection
Matthew 5:48 has echoed in my head for a long time.
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Oof. Yep. That’s how I tend to read that verse as well. I hear: “Be up here, measure up, do it all right.” But fail once and everything crumbles. Every slip feels like proof that I am not enough. Every missed beat feels like proof that I’m failing God, my wife, my life.
I can read this verse with my human experience and hear Jesus confirming my deepest fears.
If you were perfect, you would finally be safe.
If you were perfect, you would never doubt you belong and matter.
If you were perfect, you could finally rest.
But I read this verse again and tried to look closer. The word “perfect” means more than I first heard. The word “perfect” there is telios. Whole. Complete. Mature.
Jesus wasn’t giving a command here. He was giving an invitation. Become whole. Become complete and mature. It is not about never messing up. It is about a process, a becoming, a transformation. It is about letting God form you, not about beating yourself into shape through striving.
So the irony is that my version of perfection was doing the opposite. It was fragmenting me. Splitting me into the self that performs and the self that panics. The self others see and the self I keep hidden. The man trying to be whole by never being human.
Why, if by inviting us to be “perfect,” was Jesus actually inviting us to be whole and no longer divided? No longer a false self and real self, no more fig leaves. Stop earning love. Stop outsourcing my worth to the responses of others. Start becoming whole. How? Not by trying. But by receiving what I already have but haven’t learned how to yet.
Our fig leaves are our oxygen mask. They are how we survive. Grace comes in and removes our oxygen mask.
Yanking the Oxygen Mask
It’s like I’m lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines, thinking I’m alive because the tubes are breathing for me.
The doctor (We’ll call him Dr. Jehovah Rapha) leans over and says,
“You know why you’re here, right?”
“I’m here because I failed again, Doctor. I just couldn’t keep it together.”
“No,” He says, “you’re here because of this oxygen mask.”
“My what?”
“Your oxygen mask. You think it’s keeping you alive, but it’s slowly poisoning you. It’s what’s holding you down, keeping you from actually breathing.”
My chest tightens.
“You’re trying to kill me!”
“Not at all,” He says, “I’m trying to let you live.”
And then He reaches over and rips it off. Air rushes in. My lungs burn. My head spins. My body stiffens and my heart pounds like it’s running for its life.
“What are you doing?!” I gasp.
“Breathing,” He says. “This is what life really feels like.”
Grace Unmasked
That’s sometimes what Grace feels like. It feels like taking off an oxygen mask.
Grace is scary.
Because Grace means I don’t get to earn anything. My living for approval stops working because Grace has nothing to do with me, but rather something done to me. Grace means I don’t get to control if I belong or not. Grace says I don’t get to define for myself if I belong. Grace means I don’t get to earn my rest. Grace means I can’t manage how loved I am.
Perfectionism is a powerful drug that, for all its cruelty, gives me that hit of control. If I do it right, I’m safe. If I get it right, I stay included. Grace takes that away. It cuts the oxygen line.
You are already loved. You are already seen. You already belong. You already matter to me.
That’s the invasion of Jesus when He invites us to be “perfect” or whole. He’s inviting us to stop measuring ourselves by response and reaction. To stop building an identity that requires constant oil changes and pit stops. He’s inviting us to become whole. Integrated. Present. Alive. How? All because of Jesus. Nothing in our hands we bring, simply to the Cross we cling.
Just love without control.
Just belonging without performance.
Just grace without an oxygen mask.
This is what God is inviting me into. Not fixing myself. Not arriving. Not finally “getting it.” But loosening my grip on my oxygen mask.
When we release control, that’s the only place that Grace can actually reach.
Grace is not a flimsy, feel-good pie-in-the-sky sentimentality that we sometimes think it is. It is actually a force of God more powerful than any tsunami. It’s strong, powerful, and it wrecks everything in its path. Grace will not cooperate with my perfectionism. Grace will not coexist with my fig leaves. Grace dismantles everything in my life that is apart from an abiding life in Jesus.
The beautiful thing is that the more I loosen grip and allow the light of Grace to flood my heart, the more I actually will find what I’m looking for.
Bringing the Unfinished Heart
So that’s where I am at this moment. I’m learning, what feels like the hundredth time, to release the version of myself that needs to be perfect to be loved.
I’m bringing my heart to God that still feels unfinished. It’s not polished. It doesn’t feel impressive. It still feels tender, anxious, and fearful.
No fixing, no proving, no polishing. I just let it breathe under the weight of mercy and grace.
And somehow, in that terrifying space, I start to realize: this is what being loved feels like. Maybe being whole starts exactly here: unfinished, exposed, but known and loved anyway.
