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There’s a Shel Silverstein poem about a girl who can’t find anything other than herself is quite perfect, even heaven. I think we mainly suffer from the opposite malady.
Didn’t you see her perfect birthday party? The bows matched the handmade wrapping paper, matched the party favors, matched the dress she sewed her daughter. The guests were giddy, the cupcakes stacked sky high, the children behaved so sweetly and of course the bunting – why there was more than I have ever seen in my life! She planned it, she executed it and of course she blogged it the very next day, all for her precious baby. All while running a business, getting a degree, starting a charity, etc, etc . . . Why can’t I get my act together? Why does it take every bit of my energy just to get my little ones’ meals on the table and the laundry done?
Or maybe you are not quite whole, forget even the possibility of perfect. You are missing your love, or your child, your health, your dreams… You watch the rest of the world go round and wonder why God forgot your piece. I flinch when I see a mother with four boys. I grieve my loss and am quick to forget those who have never had or have lost all.
I am not quite whole, far from perfect. I have loved and lost. I have tried and failed. I have forgotten truths, alienated friends, stumbled and staggered and lost my way. I have been proud and missed the point. Yet He has taken me in, a shelter from the storm.
I am trying to see through a new lens. Not one of fragmented time, curated for all to see the perfect pieces. A lens of truth that reminds me we all have our fears, our weakness, shortcomings, sin. We all have those pieces no one sees, tucked away on shelves of guilt, in closets of embarrassment or deep down in trunks of grief. The parts we think no one will ever accept or could stand to see. The things only we have lived through, only our heart has truly known. And even the woman who would say she does not know these places, does she know pride and the lonely hardness that it brings?
Christ comes into these realities and says He knows and wants to heal. He doesn’t want our pretense of perfection, He can not work with that. He wants our brokenness, our reality, because that He can fill with life and joy and peace. Christ is perfect and there is not a place He can not come and make us whole again, if only we will let Him. Not perfect, but whole.
And while He knits us back together, it’s good for the soul to share our struggles. Let’s deal the nasty game of perfectionism a deadly blow as we lay our lives bare before eachother. Only then can we pick up each other’s packs and shoulder the weight together as we walk this crazy journey.
