Wendi Nunnery - Good Enough: Learning to Let Go of Perfect for the Sake of Holy

Praise For

Good Enough is filled to the brim with hope. Wendi tells her story with a vulnerability and grace that brought me to tears more than once. This book invites us to stop striving to reach some unattainable level of godliness and instead see ourselves through Gods eyeswith compassion and more love than we could ever imagine. As someone who struggles with anxiety and panic, I found reading Wendis words to be deeply refreshing and comforting, like a cup of hot coffee on a freezing winter morning.

Lauren Casper, author of Loving Well in a Broken World

Wendi Nunnery offers freedom to women everywhere who have spent too much time striving to please God and not enough time resting in what he has already done for us. In a world that tells us all the ways we will never measure up, Good Enough is a refreshing glass of water for those who have exhausted themselves doing everything but resting in Gods promises and love. With vulnerability and passion, Wendi reminds us that God wants so much more for us than striving to be perfect.

Taylor Schumann, author and activist

As a serial perfectionist, Ive spent years trying to do enough, say enough, be enough, and perform enough to prove I am worthy of admiration and love. The rule-following and addiction to achievement is exhausting, which is why Im so grateful to Wendi Nunnery for providing an escape route. Good Enough gives readers permission to stop striving for perfection and start living with holiness in view. If youre like me, you need this message.

Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch

There is an awakening happening. People are waking up to the idea that living a beautiful life often means letting go of the ridiculous standards put on them by others and by the culture at large. Wendi Nunnery is one of the people leading and writing on the front edge of this. In Good Enough she addresses the power of shame, the toxic expectations of others, caring for your own mental health, and what it means to get back to a faith where Jesus is enough. In the midst of a cultural moment with more confusion than clarity, her voice is exactly what is needed.

B. T. Harman, writer, podcaster, creator of Blue Babies Pink

These words are the very ones I most needed to hear. I am grateful for her gentle and open-hearted invitation into holiness over perfection, into belovedness over brokenness. Her willingness to go first and share her story (of faith, of motherhood, of mental battles, of marriage) gave me the freedom to explore more of my own evolving story, and I am confident that readers will experience the same gift in her words. Hearing her reminder that Gods banner over me says Good. Holy. Beloved. Called. helped me remember what is true, and I will cling to that.

Rachel Dawson, writer, popular bookstagrammer, and host of The RAD Podcast

Wendi Nunnery

PARACLETE PRESS

BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS

2020 First Printing

Good Enough: Learning to Let Go of Perfect for the Sake of Holy

Copyright 2020 by Wendi Nunnery

ISBN 978-1 64060-543-5

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nunnery, Wendi, 1985- author.

Title: Good enough : learning to let go of perfect for the sake of holy / Wendi Nunnery.

Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Paraclete Press, 2020. | Summary: Good Enough tackles the lie that we are required to be perfect in order to be good and, most importantly, reveals the truth about how much weve already been given Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020011858 (print) | LCCN 2020011859 (ebook) | ISBN 9781640605435 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781640605442 (epub) | ISBN 9781640605459 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Holiness. | PerfectionReligious aspectsChristianity.

Classification: LCC BT767 .N86 2020 (print) | LCC BT767 (ebook) | DDC 234/.8--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020011858

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020011859

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All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

For Lucy and Theo:
You are the best stories in my life.
And for P: I love you.

The first introduction to this book was a bit different from the one youre reading now. A few years ago, I had an idea I felt compelled to share, a truth that had cracked me open and left me split in two halves: one half the little girl who grew into a young woman convinced that just one more right decision would settle her restless quest for perfection, and the other half a wife and mother who had finally learned why that quest was a magnificent waste of time.

As I put my fingers to the keyboard and began to write, I was unaware of what I would endure in the next two years or how the lesson I thought Id already learned would continue to show up. It is a lesson for a lifetime, it seems, and this book is both a testament to the wisdom God has shared with me and an exploration of just how much more I have to learn.

Perhaps like yours, my whole life has been spent trying to live up to an impossible standard. While Ive often been good at things, very rarelyif everhave I been the best. I have lived an above-average existence in terms of what the world would label a success, and yet there is a constant sense that I dont measure up. I still walk around this beautiful life and wonder, Why am I not doing this better?

I have fallen hard for the lie that tells me perfection is the goal: for motherhood, marriage, friendship, work, health, and, most of all, for faith. I scorn myself for failure and then, once Ive tired of that, run in the opposite direction and settle into the muck and mire as if I belong in it, as if simple acceptance of my flaws is all there is to life. I make a home in my mess, comfortable in the knowledge that being flawed means I dont have to expect so much of myself.

But thats not really satisfying either. Thats just another kind of bondage.

Im tired, to tell you the truth. Ive been running in circles for a long time, like a dog chasing her tail, in an effort to be the person who never disappoints. I have sought to garner love and salvation from those who are not equipped to give it. The temptation to people please has danced right beside my desire to honor God, and I have pulled myself to pieces as I have switched from one to the other and back again. Right when I think Ive got the answers all figured out, an unexpected hand gets dealt, and I wonder how much longer this house of cards Ive created will hold up.