Growing Edges
alexa lopezArchive for April, 2008
Training for Imperfection
All this time I thought my primary mission was to train my children in the ways of integrity, honor and purity.
What has resulted so far is a teen daughter who is ashamed of normal teenage mistakes she makes because she thinks I never make any.
What??? How in the world did I ever give her that impression?
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m oftentimes shamelessly transparent enough to use my mistakes as opportunities for growth and as teaching tools for others (and myself).
My oldest daughter stunned me one night when she said to me something like, “Yeah, but you never make any mistakes!” I make mistakes each and every day, and I’m not quiet about them……or am I?
Time to step back. What have I been teaching, what have I been communicating and how did I give my first-born the idea that she has to measure up to an unreasonable standard? And shouldn’t I be flattered that my teen daughter thinks I’m perfect?
Well, I don’t want to be seen that way. It’s not real. It is an illusion that I have somehow projected into my daily living.
Because I long suffered from, and continue to deal with, a condition called “self-imposed perfectionism,” I typically hold myself to unreasonable standards that not even my God expects me to meet. Jesus only wants me to love Him — that’s my only obligaton — and I fail miserably even at that! The beauty is that His love is perfect and all I need to do is abide in His love. Abide in it. Dwell there. That word, “abide,” makes me think of comfort the way our youngest child lives to be in his pajamas….to be in body where his heart already is, fully trusting the surrounding comfort.
And that abiding produces the fruit that is Christ’s hand extended in this world, yet it does not yield perfection in our humanity. So we must train for imperfection — or better yet, train for excellence rather than aspire to perfection. We must embrace that His strength is made perfect in our weakness, that accepting our flaws as humankind is part of the training.
Perfection for humans is a lofty goal. It is fleeting as a toddler’s attention span. It is not reasonable to expect more than is possible.
Striving for perfection destroys a person. Walking in excellence allows for growth and self-acceptance. My prayer for my children is that my example will inspire them to keep reaching for excellence and not to let mistakes defeat them as a perfectionistic-minded person would.
That would be the greatest of tragedies.
© Alexa Lopez 2008
Different
I find it curious that people can be so different…have such different needs.
The uniqueness of people is incredibly amazing to me.
Our computer succumbed to some malware that remained hidden for a couple of weeks before it finally infected the memory and denied us access to our files. I don’t know how it got past our incredible resident protection antivirus program, but in hindsight I suspect it probably had something to do with my giving permission to a “friendly” email thinking the antivirus program’s loud “WHOOP! WHOOP!” was a false alarm. >: /
After several failed attempts to quarantine the culprit, we took it to the “doctor” — the Geek Squad. The guy who checked us in asked us to describe the symptoms, told us it could be this, that, or the other thing and what measures would be taken: worst case scenario, if it was a Win32 virus, they’d have to reformat the hard drive.
Eleven days later, we received an automated message telling us our computer was ready for pick-up.
I guess I was expecting something similar to when my children’s pediatrician diagnoses my children’s illnesses and explains the treatment. I leave the office feeling like I’ve had closure.
We presented our receipt and our name at the Geek Squad counter and the guy retrieved our computer from the back. I waited for him to give me the low-down, to tell me what problems they found, explain the extent of the infection.
He gave us nothing.
“So, did they say what they found?” I asked him finally.
“It looks like they had to reformat the hard drive and restore the original operating software.”
The questions I wanted to ask flooded my mind: “Did they find the source of the infection? How long was it in there? What did I miss? Was there more than one type of malware/virus? Was it indeed a Win32 virus?”
Okay, so you’re thinking, “Duh, they reformatted the hard drive…that must mean it was a Win32 — how much more information do you need?”
Even as my questions wanted to pour out my mouth I knew the answers probably weren’t there — and if they were, I wouldn’t have understood them anyway. I guess in my “need” for details/information I was trying to initiate dialogue about the service our computer had just received. I was uncomfortable with the lack of information. Why was that?
We were driving out of the parking lot before it finally dawned on me: I needed closure.
Closure! It’s just a computer! I had to laugh at myself.
Seriously, it was a closure thing. And it wasn’t Geek Squad’s problem.
I just find it amazing how people can be so different. Some people need answers to “why” a problem occurred; others simply need to know a problem has been solved and that’s good enough.
Experiencing this in the day-to-day has helped me to be (just a little) more understanding, to suspend my expectations and let people be who they are.
© Alexa Lopez 2008
