One of the challenges of being a perfectionist is that my focus naturally wants to fall on the end of a process. As I look toward what I ultimately want, my gaze skims past a seemingly endless array of missteps and failures.
This is rather distracting, sort of like trying to listen to your husband in a room strewn with toys, dishes and clothes while your children jump up and down shouting for attention. I don't know about you, but there are times when even a Herculean force of will could not keep me single-mindedly focused in that tumult.
The noise of my mistakes can sometimes derail me so badly that I sit down and give up. Like clapping my hands over my ears and wailing "Aaaaa! I can't hear myself think!" to my raucous children, I fuss and whine at my own flaws.
Sometimes it is hard for me to remember that while it's important to have a goal, the joy is found in the journey. It also helps me to consider my heavenly father's perspective.
As a parent, I expect our four year old to be able to put away his toys, make his bed and help set the table. I don't expect him to mow the lawn. Our thirteen year old is a whiz at mowing the lawn, but I don't expect him to drive to the store and do the shopping. I do not love my sons any less for what they are as yet unable to do.
I want so badly to be a daughter that makes her heavenly Daddy proud. When I stumble, which I do every day, I like to imagine Him thinking, "She's trying, she's really trying." I don't get upset with Little Warrior because he writes a lower case "d" backwards sometimes. In fact I am thrilled that he wants to write at all!
Bit by bit, little by little, God is making me over into the woman He called me to be. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come."*
If every day I take a baby step toward the goal... if I focus on the present moment... if I keep my eyes on Jesus, "the author and perfecter of our faith"** (oh wait, He's the perfecter not me?)...
"Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus"***
I think I can... I think I can... I think I can...
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* 2 Corinthians 5:17
** Hebrews 12:2
*** Philippians 3:13-14
Praise God that we don't have to be perfect. We CAN'T be! All we have to do is keep our gaze on Him and take those baby steps. Dance those baby steps!
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