I always wanted everything to be perfect. I had a distorted Disney view of perfect. You know the one, where everyone lives happily ever after and everything looks like it is straight out of a magazine cover. I remember being a young girl dreaming of this picture perfect life, white picket fence and all. Well…I am calling crap on the whole ideal of PERFECTIONISM. I have a great life. I have been searching for “perfection” in almost everything under the sun. I wanted the perfect wedding. Nope. Not perfect. The unity candle melted in the trunk of my car for crying out loud! I am pretty sure wages were made as to whether or not my dress would fit me (cause it did not three weeks before the big day and I refused to try it back on before my wedding day.) Not sure what I was trying to prove there. I expected the perfect balance as a working mom and wife. Still working on that one. Y’all I expected my kids to be these diligent little people who always had it together and ACTUALLY would want to keep their rooms clean. Uh ya, not so much. I set completely unrealistic expectations for family and myself. I held us to a standard that we can never achieve. We are fallible. We are human.
It is only in recent months, that I have finally learned a hard lesson. We do not find ourselves through perfection, we find it through our Faith in Jesus. I mean, let’s be real here, the only “perfect human” to walk this Earth is Jesus. And last I checked he still owned the only title of “perfection.”
Life is messy. The cars and house do not self clean, but man if they did! Kids are humans. they are going to lose it from time to time or basically everyday. You are going to charbroil cinnamon rolls. Your husband is going to fail you. Bottom line is our contentment does not come from people, Hobby Lobby (I do love some Hobby Lobby, but I digress.) Our peace comes from our faith and a personal relationship with God.
I was not putting God first. I was trapped in that circle of putting the world first. For a long time, I searched for perfection in my home, my children, my husband, or my job. I was certainly not finding contentment through a relationship with God. I wanted perfection in worldly things.
I am no longer searching for the perfect in everyone and everything. Let’s be honest, my house is LIVED IN. On any given day, my house is somewhere between Better Homes and Gardens and an episode of Hoarders. My kids like to keep everything like their dad, including packages things come in.
What have I learned from all this? I have learned that I need to press into Christ more and the ways of the world less. This is tough. Everyday I am struggling. I am perfectly imperfect. Some days I am a straight up hot mess. You know what? That is just fine with me because I am HIS mess. He knows I am flawed and I know that I am flawed too. Sisters, we need to love on each other and encourage one another. We need to join forces as a strong tribe of women who are there for each other through the storms of life, and there will be storms, but hopefully the storm of perfectionism is no longer one of those storms.
