Picture Perfect: When Life Doesn't Line Up (First Edition)

A compassionate and biblically grounded look at perfectionism that invites readers to move from pressure and self-reliance to the freedom of God’s grace.

In Picture Perfect, counselor and author Amy Baker explores our culture’s mixed view of perfectionism—celebrating high achievers even as perfectionism fuels anxiety, anger, burnout, and paralysis. Rather than simply advising perfectionists to relax or lower their standards, Baker challenges the common narrative and turns to Scripture to show that the real issue is deeper and more hopeful.

Drawing on twenty-five years of counseling experience, she helps readers uncover the beliefs, fears, and desires that drive perfectionism and reveals how Christ’s perfect work reshapes our motives, expectations, and goals. By pointing to God’s grace and the transforming power of Jesus, Baker offers a path that replaces the relentless ache of “never enough” with the confidence and rest found in him.

• Addresses perfectionism at its root rather than offering surface-level fixes or clichés.
• Shows how Christ’s perfection reframes desires, motivations, and expectations in everyday life.
• Offers hope and freedom from self-imposed pressure through the truth of God’s grace and the sufficiency of Jesus.

Amy Baker, PhD, is the ministry resource director at Faith Church (Lafayette, IN); director of counseling for Vision of Hope, a faith-based residential treatment program; instructor and counselor at Faith Biblical Counseling Ministries; a council member of the Biblical Counseling Coalition; and the author of Getting to the Heart of Friendships and Picture Perfect: When Life Doesn't Line Up as well as several counseling minibooks. She is the editor of Caring for the Souls of Children: A Biblical Counselor's Manual. She and her husband, Jeff, have two children.