Wedding Memories

When I was two years old, I was the flower girl in my aunt’s and uncle’s wedding.  I’m sure there was a rehearsal, and I’m sure I was instructed how to proceed down the aisle and where I was to stand after scattering my petals.  I don’t remember that.  What I do remember distinctly, however, is entering a room with giants standing in rows on either side, their gazes all directly upon me.  I remember feeling terrified, and my feet remained frozen.  Until I spotted my daddy.  Being a part of the wedding party, he was already at the front of the church with the other men.  He was my daddy, and he was my security.  And so I ran down the aisle, screaming the whole way, “Daddy!”  And I stood safely by his side for the remainder of the ceremony.

The Holy Spirit recently brought this memory to the forefront of my mind.  I’m far from being a two-year-old, but in so many ways, I can identify with little girl I once was.  When I enter the arena of my life, it often happens that I encounter giants in one form or another.  Some are real; others simply perceived, but the result is the same:  I am paralyzed by fear.  I can’t seem to take even one more step down the pathway of my becoming because the risk seems so very great.  I momentarily forget what I’ve already learned because the sneering faces of the giants are so daunting.  Until I spot my Daddy.  He’s my security, and he beckons me remain by his side for always.  In his presence, there is joy, and there is peace, and there is protection.  Giants become diminutive, and I regain the strength necessary to rise and walk and Become.

Ramblings of a Struggling Perfectionist

I don’t know why I expect myself to know what I don’t know.  Not only know what I don’t know, but perfectly execute feats of skill and prowess without adherence to the adage, “Practice makes perfect.”  I want immediate “perfect” without “practice.”  That could hint to impatience, of which I’m certainly guilty.  I’ve become accustomed to instant gratification and can become embarrassingly childish when having to wait for something.  But this goes beyond mere impatience.  It’s not that only that I want “perfect”, but I expect it of myself.  I might try to fool myself into believing that perfectionism is the standard to which I hold only myself, but the truth is that I will hold everyone to the standard by which I determine my own worth or acceptability, and if that standard is perfection, then perfection is what I will expect and demand of everyone.

I’ve heard much mention about perfectionism, often comments made in jest.  Yet I find that the root of perfectionism is deep and gnarly and invasive and nothing to joke about.  Perfectionism seeks out, at the very core of who I am, that root of worth; and it attaches itself and injects itself and seeks to become synonymous with the definition of self.  It detracts from who I am because it makes it so that I can’t be apart from what I do.  It inverts that which God ordained- that I do because of who I am- and screams at me the absurdity of such a notion.  “Do!  Do!  Do!  And thereby be!”

The cure, I believe, for perfectionism is failure.  I must recognize that failure is not necessarily equivalent to sinfulness.  In fact, as I walk in sync and in friendship with Jesus, a great deal of my failures will not be sin issues.  They’ll simply be moments of learning.  I believe the thing God is trying to teach me is to see the beauty in brokenness; to behold myself not merely as a mess, but as a beautiful mess, or in the words of my dear cousin, a “good mess.”  When we risk, there’s the potential and even the probability of failure.  But there’s also the potential and even probability of unimaginable discovery and reward and opportunity to be catapulted even further into our destinies.

I realize that God isn’t asking me to lead a “play it safe” life.  “The goal of life isn’t to arrive safely at death.”  To live a life of risk means I must take an axe to the root of perfectionism.  I don’t fully understand right now how to do that, or what it will look like.  But I can imagine Jesus, chuckling while I frustratedly attempt to perfectly nix perfectionism.  “Silly girl!” he says.  Then he comes up, takes the axe from my hands, and says, “Here.  Watch how I do.  Learn from me.  I’ll teach you the unforced rhythms of grace.  And while we’re at it, let’s get our hands a little dirty!”