Podcast

Finding Peace Beyond Perfectionism: Christine Hoy

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Christine: in May of 2021, God and his mercy sent three women to me within a span of just like a week.

Christine: The women didn’t know each other, but all three of them carried the message. You have got to stop. Take a breath, Rest. You’ve just gotta take a break. And one woman even used the term lament. You need to take time to lament. I had a general idea what that meant, but I had to look it up.

Welcome to the Unshakable hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking mind? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected my prayers, that God would renew our hope and his word and his love through these [00:01:00] conversations.

Hey friends. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m wondering how many of you are longing for more peace in your life? Maybe the lack of peace is the result of controlling perfectionist tendencies. Maybe it’s unrealistic expectations or comparisons.

My guest today has been on a transformative journey where the Lord rescued her from the endless pursuit of perfectionism. We’ll be drawing from her book Peace Beyond Perfection, overcoming the fear of not being enough.

So let me tell you about her. Christine Hoy is an author and speaker devoted to helping Christian women break free from the exhausting cycle of perfectionism and discover true peace in Christ . Through her book, Christine guides women toward embracing their authentic identity in Christ rather than striving for impossible standards, and she leads us through a transformative journey of finding true [00:02:00] rest in Jesus.

In her speaking and writing, she offers encouraging messages that resonate with women who are longing to exchange perfectionism for God’s perfect peace.

Christine. Thank you for being here.

We’ve waited for a while to have this conversation.

Christine: I know, I know. I think we started talking about it in April or May, and here it is, September.

Kelly: Yeah. I’m so glad. I’m looking forward to it.

Kelly: You have an amazing story of transformation. God broke you free from the chains of perfectionism and taught you how to embrace a life anchored in grace. I’m just wondering if you could tell us the story. There’s this particular story in your book where you began to realize.

Kelly: Something was not quite right and maybe started to clue in that there was an underlying problem.

Christine: Yes, I think I know which one you’re referring to. So I was blessed to get remarried 11 years ago. We just celebrated our [00:03:00] 11 year anniversary in August, and it was a couple months after. Our wedding that all of my adult, adult children came to visit for the weekend.

Christine: I was so excited. I just wanted it to be the perfect weekend. And we lived in northern Michigan at the time, and so I was planning, you know, hikes in the dunes and game nights and telling stories around the campfire, and I was basically driving everybody crazy because it seemed like every few minutes I was.

Christine: Just checking in with ’em. You doing okay? Can I get you anything? Are you happy? And they, they were a lot of strained patients on their face and, but really , the person that got the work, the brunt of it , was my new husband. So Sunday morning I thought, okay, I know that the weekend has not gone particularly well, but I am going to make sure we just have this wonderful Sunday morning big brunch to send them [00:04:00] off that afternoon. And cooking is not one of my. Good things, but my husband normally does the cooking. But I just, I wanted to do it. I wanted to have the kids see that mom was doing it, and the smoke alarm was going off.

Christine: The orange juice had gotten knocked over. I had pancake flour everywhere. It was a mess. And just the expectations that I’d put on myself that for that weekend, just to make it perfect and just to see, like this was just the icing on the cake. I just crumbled, like I slid down to the floor and I just remember sitting on the kitchen floor or, oh, just tears just streaming down my face and just feeling so defeated And just. How could I have messed up that badly? And my husband, he’s so sweet, came in, lifted me up, scooped me up in his arms, just kinda lightly kissed the top of my head. He said, honey, [00:05:00] everything’s gonna be okay. He salvaged breakfast, make sure everybody got fed. But later that day, after everybody went home we were cleaning up.

Christine: And he made the comment, he goes, honey, I don’t like it when your kids come to visit. I’m like, what? And he quickly realized how I’d taken it and he said, no, no, no. It’s not that I don’t like them. I don’t like who you become when they’re around. And that really got my attention.

Christine: And I realized that, I had been really hard on him. I was like barking at him and, you know, do this and , kind of trying to control the situation, control the environment, and so yeah, that was kind of the beginning of realizing that some changes needed to be made.

Christine: But, it wasn’t until, maybe five, years later,. my mom had been diagnosed in 2018. With terminal cancer, and so I was going down to [00:06:00] Indiana every week to spend time with her and

Christine: just be with her and try to meet her needs. And it was the most time I’d spent with her, probably since I had left home. I just became aware of how critical she was and how demanding she was and how she needed to control every single situation. It made me. Aware that that , I’m not sure at the time if I would’ve known to put the label perfectionism on it, but that’s what it was.

Christine: I, I realized that she was, I definitely knew she was controlling, but she was also a people pleaser. Not necessarily with me, but with other people. Like I, I realized, I, I just got to know her at a deeper level. And I remember asking my husband one time, I said, you don’t see any of those tendencies in me, do you?

Christine: He’s like, well, since you asked, as a matter of fact, I do. So I I took it to the Lord [00:07:00] and. There was another story I talked about in the book where we had friends of ours visiting from South Africa and they were doing my dishes and I don’t know why I just.

Christine: The dishwasher has to be stacked a certain way. Right. And it just, I, I enjoy doing it. And so after they insisted on helping, I would sneak back to the kitchen and redo the dishwasher. I was thinking that they hadn’t noticed. And my husband pointed out to me that they had noticed.

Christine: And I’m like, what do I do? I don’t wanna be like this, but I don’t know how to change. And so I asked him to I to walk along with me , and I took it to the Lord. I just said, I I don’t wanna be like this anymore. I don’t wanna be stressed out. I don’t wanna be overwhelmed and nagging and you know, all the things that made me not fun to be around.

Christine: The Lord took me on a journey and it really culminated, I would say about three years after my mom was originally [00:08:00] diagnosed. She had passed away the end of Thanksgiving of 2020, and I’d spent the next six months trying to not only go through her estate, she had three homes. She had the home in Michigan where I had grown up, and then she had the family home that had been my grandparents, in Indiana and another home that we kind of used for , a relative my mom had been taken care of. And I am a fourth generation only child. I’m pretty sure nobody.

Christine: Prior to me had ever thrown anything away. I, obviously, there were a ton of things from the 19 hundreds. There were a ton of things from the 18 hundreds. And then my mother was a hoarder on top of that, so I had to get through a whole layer of, things she’d acquired.

Christine: , Anyway, I was doing all that and I had. Basically put my work on hold for at least the last couple years that I was taking care of her. And so I was just like anxious to get back into work and just do all these things. And so I was killing myself just trying to get it all done. And [00:09:00] in May of 2021, God and his mercy sent three women to me within a span of just like a week.

Christine: Separately, the women didn’t know each other, but all three of them carried the message. You have got to stop. Like, stop, take a breath, Rest. You’ve just gotta take a break. And one woman even used the term lament. You need to take time to lament. I had a general idea what that meant, but I had to look it up.

Christine: I thought, well, you know, it’s almost the beginning of the summer. Maybe God just wants me to take the summer off and, I can try to do that. We had a, a move ahead of us and some other things. But I thought, okay, you know, I can do that. And no, it took a full year that God just had me stop everything.

Christine: I’m not saying that’s what everybody needs to do, that’s just how far gone I was. And he took me through a year of surrender where I got to the point where I could just live with open hands and [00:10:00] surrender every part of my life to him and stop trying to control. My own life, lives of people around me, every situation.

Christine: And I just learned to trust him. I realized through that part of my fear was if I didn’t stay in control, people would realize that I wasn’t who I appeared to be on the outside that mm-hmm. I wasn’t as put together as I had hoped that I was portraying. And so yeah, God taught me how to live authentically and trust in him and not try to be somebody I wasn’t.

Kelly: Wow, that’s so impactful. So many of us go through life with these hidden drives. You didn’t know what was driving all this behavior, but God was so gracious, as you said, just to uncover the roots by taking care of your mom. Like you began [00:11:00] to see these generational habits and, and then you saw the effects it had on other people more clearly than you ever had before because you were being affected.

Kelly: By your mom. I guess I’m always amazed by God’s creativity and the way he used your, your love for your mom and your caregiving, for her to answer your prayer. ’cause you had prayed, God, I don’t wanna live this way. Help me. Yeah. Help me. Yeah. I love when the ways of God are highlighted in a story that, well, I’d love for you just to help us understand.

Kelly: You’ve explained some of it, but what are some of the ways that we might know, we might discover that we’re trapped in performance or perfectionism or even the root of that, as you described, these lies that you’re not enough.

Christine: Yeah. Yep. So I’m actually gonna refer to my book here, if that’s okay.

Christine: Sure. So [00:12:00] some of the ways that you might recognize these tendencies in your own life is if you look for validation through your achievements. I mean, I had quickly learned as a young child that. I got more attention if I was doing things to please my mother and my grandmother. And, you know, if I was excelling in school I was in, it’s kind of silly, I am tone deaf, but they had me in music lessons and ballet lessons and French lessons.

Christine: Like I started French at the age of four and a half. So I quickly learned that. By excelling in school and extracurricular activities, I got more attention. That carried over into my adult life too, so that I continue to try to you know, with work and church volunteer commitments

Christine: that the more I did, the more recognition I got, that I felt better about who I was. Some people look [00:13:00] for validation through their possessions or the opinions of others. Mainly, you know, do you rely on affirmation, praise or attention from others to feel valued? And those, those things are a big indicator that we aren’t turning to God and recognizing our value in him, not from what other people say about us, but from what he says about us.

Christine: And there’s nothing that we have to do for him to love us. , He just wants to spend time with us and, you know, keep company with him. There’s so much freedom in that, when you realize that. You can just be yourself with Jesus and, and feel his love and know that there’s, there’s nothing you can do for him to love you more.

Christine: Mm-hmm. So, another thing is, do you rely on your own efforts finding it challenging to surrender control and instead trusting God’s plan for your life? [00:14:00] That’s a biggie. Yeah. Right.

Christine: So I’ve, I’ve been learning, and it’s a, it’s a continual process as he unpeels other layers that even, when you think you’re surrendering, there’s still areas where he says, are you relying on me or are you relying on yourself? We have this like false humility sometimes. Well, you know,

Christine: I don’t wanna bother God with this. I’ll j I’ll just do this myself. He doesn’t want that. He really wants to be included in everything. When I was writing this book, I actually had a journal that I sat down with every morning before I started my writing time, and I would write out a prayer to him.

Christine: I didn’t think of it as a prayer, I just was writing to him, but that’s what it was. It was having a conversation with him. Lord, , what do you want to work on today? What truth do you wanna reveal? What’s the message you wanna share with, with my reader? What are we working on together today?

Christine: That’s how intimately he wants to [00:15:00] be involved. And so many times I think we’re like okay, so God wants me head in this direction and Okay, got it. And we just take off. Yeah. And he is like, no, no, no, no. I wanna walk with you through this. Yeah. Don’t try to do it on your own. Right. And so, yeah, just surrendering that, that self reliance and learning just to depend completely on him

Kelly: that is huge.

Kelly: I wanna just say the whole surrendering thing. Okay. That’s been your whole journey. You’ve been surrendering. Control. And Proverbs three, five and six is was a huge verse early on in my life as I was parenting these four kids, three with special needs moving every two to three years in the Air Force.

Kelly: Things were all out of control. And I so wanted to find some security in controlling everything, but God gave me that verse early on. I was super stressed and I said, this is not the life you want me to lead. Where’s my peace? And I was teaching Bible study and helping [00:16:00] people memorize scripture. But I said, God, could you just gimme one verse that will help me have peace?

Kelly: And that’s the verse he gave me was Proverbs three, five and six. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And I love that. On the flip side, he says immediately, and don’t rely on your own understanding. ’cause he knows that’s that’s the struggle for all of us. Yeah, absolutely. And he takes us on these journeys just deeper and deeper and deeper into intimacy where he’s just very gently pointing out, you’re not trusting me here.

Kelly: Maybe you’re trusting in my provision rather than me as your provider. If I uproot these plans, are you still gonna be trusting in me? Where is your. Trust. And so I just love highlighting the fact that this journey was a continual surrender as you walked in partnership with the Holy Spirit as he led you and doing this work, this book, he was just leading you step by step [00:17:00] by step, and you surrender to that.

Kelly: So powerful.

Christine: Another thing that we might wanna consider is where do we base our ident identity? Is it in the roles of being a wife and a mother? Or, you know, in our profession, is that where we get our identity or do we get it from being his child? Yeah. And do we feel the need to be perfect in every aspect of our lives?

Christine: Are we overwhelmed by perceived failure mistakes? You know, thinking of myself back on that kitchen floor, just surrounded my, by my own inadequacy and, do we allow those experiences , to, to rule us, to guide us, or are we able to let those go and say, you know what, I’m not perfect and it’s okay.

Christine: Yes. You know, how critical we are of ourselves. And I, I wanna bring this story of those those three women full circle because that’s what God did for me. Three years after that. May of 2024, so almost [00:18:00] exactly three years. God sent three other women, again, women who did not know each other to give me the message.

Christine: Christine, . One woman said, the most remarkable thing about you is the peace that you have in your life right now. Wow. And one woman actually said, Christine, you exude peace. This former. Perfectionist people, pleaser control, freak exudes peace, only God, you know?

Christine: I refer to it as my rooster story because I always God brought this to mind probably about six months ago. And just reminded me of Peter when Peter denied knowing Jesus three times and then the rooster crows. Then when Peter came back after his resurrection and he was fixing breakfast for the disciples, and he gave Peter an opportunity to three times, Peter, do you love me?

Christine: And three times, yes, Lord, I love you and. [00:19:00] Well, I realized that while I had never denied knowing Jesus. I denied the power of his work in my life. I had denied allowing him to you know, to, to have rule control over my life . Because God had taken me through those three years, and believe me, it wasn’t over after three years, but apparently it was noticeable after three years that God was so gracious to say, Hey, I see you.

Christine: I see that you’re trusting me. I see that you’re less likely to rely on yourself. I’m not perfect, but I wanna share a practice that I started doing. I had read a book by John Eldridge and he talked about having a. I think he called it a peaceful pause, but he has an app that’s called the the one Minute Pause.

Christine: And I, I downloaded that app and I set the alarm to go off at 10:00 AM and, and 4:00 PM and I would stop at those two times every day and allow that to interrupt my day, [00:20:00] whatever is going on. He starts with , a one minute, meditation. And , he has ’em up to 10 minutes now and just walking you through.

Christine: Slowing down, breathing and focusing on him and getting our focus off of ourselves, getting our focus off of our circumstances and getting it back on him where it belongs. Right. I have a little toddler grandson, and. Has toddler moments and sometimes I’ll just grab his little cheeks and just turn ’em and, you know, have ’em look at me and just calm him down and, and get him to focus.

Christine: And I feel sometimes that that’s what, that’s what God does with me. You’re just like, come on, you’re, going a little nuts over here, just grab your face and I just wanna look in your eyes, you look into mine. That practice and there were times when I was upset about things that were beyond my control, which I’ve learned as most things in life or beyond my control.

Christine: Yes. I learned the default reaction to just stopping immediately bring things to him and , not letting [00:21:00] things go the way I thought they might go. Rule me. I don’t let that rule me anymore. It was God’s way of, after , those three women , gave messages of caution.

Christine: I felt like these, he sent these other three women to give messages of blessing. Like I felt like he was blessing me and saying. You’ve done good. Let’s keep going. So, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. That’s beautiful. I love that he did that for you.

Kelly: One of the questions I really wanna ask you, Christine,

Kelly: As you’ve been on this journey, if there were certain scriptures that anchored you to God’s heart, that helped you overcome fear, people pleasing, that were really impactful for you as you walked this journey of transformation?

Christine: Yes, definitely. One of the verses that I clung to quite a bit was the verse I ended up putting in the front of the book, which is John 1427. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you, I do not give to you is the world gives. Do not let [00:22:00] your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid because

Christine: I know he is talking, to the disciples as he’s preparing to leave them. Isn’t that true that , when we don’t have peace, when we’re not trusting in him that our hearts are troubled and we’re afraid. And I think that the root of most of our. Perfectionism qualities or tendencies is a fear.

Christine: There’s several different fears , and I detail those in the book. And I’d be happy, to, to mention a couple here. Fear of rejection is one. Fear of disapproval, conflict.

Christine: There’s, probably seven or eight that I identified in the book.

Kelly: The scripture you shared, John 1427 is one of the verses that God gave me when I was so afraid that my twins my third pregnancy.

Kelly: Mm-hmm. So I was gonna have four kids. We didn’t know if the twins would be hearing or deaf, and I just wanted to find peace. Like I had spent so much time praying and [00:23:00] let’s say arguing with God about this whole issue. And trying to come to a place of surrender, as I sought him through this process that’s the verse he impacted my heart with so powerfully.

Kelly: Kelly, I’m trying to give you a peace that’s not rooted in outcomes. I’m giving you a peace that is in me. You’re unchanging savior. I’m your only hope. I’m the one in control. I’m the sovereign Lord of your life. You can trust me. That’s where your peace comes from. And so every time I would start to get a little scared and just think, I can’t do this.

Kelly: I can’t do this. If they are hearing impaired, I would just sense the Lord reminding me, I’m your peace. I’m the one in charge. And it brought, it brought victory over fear. It was very powerful.

Christine: Yeah, he does that. He’s very faithful. Yeah. Another scripture that I really [00:24:00] leaned into and continue to is Matthew 1128 through 30, where Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Christine: Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you’ll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And I just love that, that invitation and it’s not a one-time invitation, it’s an ongoing, every day come to me and I, just, I love that. I was.

Christine: Interviewed by someone else, and she taught me, and I’ve since explored it more on my own that the yolk is not just the, the farm implement that we all think of you know, guiding the oxen or whatever as your, as the farmers we’re plowing the field, but the yoke was [00:25:00] what the rabbis, they came up with their own rules.

Christine: On what it meant to be a good Jew. This is what they would teach to their disciples. They were adding on more too. What these Jewish men had already grown up , with the Torah and making it very difficult for them.

Christine: And Jesus is saying, take my yolk, take, take my rules and learn from me. He’s gentle and he wants things to be simple for us and not complicated and not make it hard to come to him. . I think it’s so tempting as Christian women to fall into the trap of, okay, I’ve gotta do, volunteer for this and bring this meal and lead this Bible study and, take care of this group of kids.

Christine: Whatever. We feel like we have to do all the things right. And it goes back into, earning God’s love and we don’t have to earn [00:26:00] God’s love. All we have to do is love him and obey him. That’s what he’s asked us to do and love others. So it’s just a reminder that following him is not is not meant to be a burden, and there’s so much freedom in following him.

Kelly: Right.

Kelly: Right. And there’s another thing that Dane Orland shares in his book, gentle and Lowly, about the yoke. Mm-hmm. When Jesus says, my yoke is easy, he uses this word that also means kind. And so he is just trying to convey the kindness of the heart of God that is behind this invitation.

Kelly: It’s so beautiful. Just what you described. He was trying to set him free from the burdens, from the yoke, from the laws that were all manmade. They were not God’s heart at all, and that does set us free when we think. I just had Heather Holman on my podcast,

Christine: I haven’t met her. I love her books.

Kelly: So you’ve read Seated in Christ? Yeah. Yes. So we talked [00:27:00] a lot about that and how Ephesians says you’re already there, it’s past tense, you know it’s done. You have access. To all that Jesus has already given you. There’s no earning, there’s no comparison, there is no perfectionism involved.

Kelly: You’re at the table. He loves you. He created you now walking the truth of who you are in Him. It’s so freeing and your book leads us on that same journey, this journey and Path of freedom.

Kelly: Well, Christine, you talk a lot about the fact that you have discovered joy by establishing some rhythms of rest, and in doing so, you’ve experienced deeper intimacy with God.

Kelly: You’ve described some of this already, but I’m wondering if you have any other insights from that journey that you wanna share with us that maybe highlight even more about the tenderness of Jesus?

Christine: Well, we had just talked about Jesus saying, come to me.

Christine: I think for me anyway, I was so busy before. We wear [00:28:00] busyness as this badge of honor but it’s not. For me, especially that, that first year when he really got hold of me,. I realized that spending time in his presence, that was the where the treasure was. He is the treasure.

Christine: I would love for your listeners to find ways to. Spend more time just being in his presence. And that doesn’t mean more things to check off. And it’s not reading the Bible more, it’s not doing, doing more. It’s just being in his presence. It’s, taking 10 minutes in the morning to sit, you know, maybe sit outside while the watch the sunrise and just talking to him and.

Christine: Not always doing all the talking, listening to him, hearing, hearing his voice. We are so quick to wake up in the morning, we grab our phones, check our emails, check our text messages, maybe take a peek at [00:29:00] Facebook. I have really been challenged myself too. Enjoy that, that early morning time with him and what a difference it’s made in just experiencing his presence, because that’s where the peace is found is in his presence.

Christine: So slowing down, taking that Sabbath rust, Sabbath is not a suggestion, it’s a commandment for me, it can look differently for people, but for me it’s time. It’s a time to just stop my work, stop, whatever that is, that’s work for me. Even things that I enjoy, which ’cause I enjoy my work.

Christine: But take time to, you know, maybe visit with some family members. To, take a walk or a bike ride to give our souls time to just kind of play. I had someone suggest to me the other day, you know, when was the last time you, you blew bubbles? And I’m thinking I do that with my grandsons.

Christine: Maybe I should do that on my own sometime. But [00:30:00] just to take time to stop. Getting off that treadmill that we find ourselves on and unplugging, putting our phones away. I’ve gotten so much peace by. Not having my phone with me all the time, throwing that in the drawer not turning on the tv, on closing my laptop.

Christine: That’s a big one. And getting rid of the noise that distract us from hearing him. That’s really made a big, big impact just to enjoy his presence. Mm-hmm.

Christine: And realize that’s not a, a thing to do. It’s a thing to, accept his invitation, and just be in his presence.

Kelly: Absolutely. I love that you connected. Being in his presence with making his voice grow louder. When we silence all the other noise that we hear constantly, it allows us to pay attention to his voice, to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us

Kelly: Powerful. [00:31:00] Well, so, Christine’s book for our listeners again, is Peace Beyond Perfection, overcoming the Fear of Not Being Enough. It’s a very practical book. It’s full of stories, . She just wants to come alongside you in this journey as you walk on your own transformation journey from perfectionism to peace.

Kelly: And I’m wondering, Christine, if you could just tell our listeners how they could connect with you.

Christine: Sure. My website is Christine Carter hoy.com. Christine is C-H-R-S-T-I-N-E. Carter is C-A-R-T-E-R, and Hoy is HOY. And on there I have several freebies they can sign up for. One of which they might be interested in is a discussion guide that goes along with the book itself.

Christine: That’s free to anyone. It’s written for a group, but people can certainly use it on their own just to give them some thought provoking questions that they might use as they’re [00:32:00] reading the book just to take them a little bit deeper.

Kelly: That’s so good. Well, thank you so much for being here today, Christine.

Kelly: This is very, very encouraging.

Christine: Thank you, Kelly. Thank you for having me on.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall.org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakeable Hope podcast.