The Heart of Perfection: How the Saints Taught Me to Trade My Dream of Perfect for God's

Winner of the 2020 Catholic Press Association Book Award In a book hailed as liberating (Gary Chapman, New York Times bestselling author), an award-winning author and mother of four weaves her own stories and struggles with those of seven ex-perfectionist saints (and one heretic) who show us how to pursue a new kind of perfection: freedom in Christ. Spiritual perfectionisman obsession with flawlessness rooted in the belief that we can earn Gods loveis dangerous because so many of us mistake it for virtue. Its toxic cycle of pride, sin, shame, blame, and despair distorts our vision, dulls our faith, and leads us to view others through the same hypercritical lens we think God is using to view us. As a lifelong overachiever who drafted her first rsum in sixth grade and spell-checked her high school boyfriends love letters, Colleen Carroll Campbell knows something about the perfectionist trap. But it was only after she became a mother that she started to see how insidiously perfectionism had infected her spiritual life, how lethal it could be to her happiness and her family, and how disproportionately it afflicts the people working hardest to serve God. In the ruins of her own mistakes, Colleen dug into Scripture and the lives of the canonized saints for answers. She discovered to her surprise that many holy men and women were, in fact, recovering perfectionists. And their grace-fueled victory oer this maladynot perfectionist strivingwas the key to their heroic virtue and contagious joy. In The Heart of Perfection, Colleen weaves the stories and wisdom of seven ex-perfectionist saints (and one heretic) with Scripture and beautifully crafted tales of her own trial-and-error experiments in applying that wisdom to her life. Gorgeously written and deeply insightful, Colleen Carroll Campbells The Heart of Perfection is a must-read (Jeannie Gaffigan, executive producer of The Jim Gaffigan Show) that gives us permission towalk in the freedom of Gods unconditional love (Jennifer Fulwiler, author of One Beautiful Dream). For a free Heart of Perfection reading guide for book clubs, visit Colleen-Campbell.com.