perFectiOn: a confession to my affair.

It has been a much better week for my emotions.  Stable.  Much more so trust and climbing over a hump, I feel.  There were many sweet encounters with God and people this week which brought amazing perspective.  Why does the truth have to amaze me so often, am I in the dark that much?  Anyway, as I have come into the "light" you might say, a certain dark issue I have has been exposed.  My love affair with Perfection.

Let me explain.  This wolf disguised as a meek and fluffy sheep was introduced to me at a young age.  Church, my parents, Christian radio and songs in Sunday School like "Be Careful Little Eyes," taught me the right thing to do so that God would be pleased and I would be blessed and everyone would be happy.  I would even live long on the earth if I honored my parents!  These messages are filled with truth and common sense.  Thank God for wisdom and parents and people who care enough to teach the right way to go.  We knew we could never really obtain the perfection we sought through following the rules, but we could at least try, and try harder.  As I grew up and was punished for rebellion and encouraged in obedience and performance in the home through consequences, I realized that if I tried hard enough, I could live a relatively happy life.  I learned how to please my parents and how to appologize to God and them when I messed up. My journal in my early teens is filled with self loathing prayers and tearful "I'm sorrys". I learned how to feel better by doing as good as I possibly could: things like being kind to my siblings and not rolling my eyes at mom so as to avoid reprimand and guilt.  I liked being around perfection, or things and people without uncomfortable flaws.  It felt safe and nice!  Nobody got hurt.  All throughout my youth I had a bit of true relationship with God and I truly wanted to please Him.  But I still loved how perfection made me feel. I began to hate myself when I couldn't produce this quality and have a sincere dislike for those who couldn't or wouldn't try to be perfect.  This dislike made me feel more guilty, for the record.  Unfortunately, as I pursued perfection, my relationships with God and people suffered.  It became an affair/addiction to this thing.

Last week the old flame flared up, and I didn't even recognize it at first.  You see, as God has pursued me with His perfect love, I have been won over by Him and I have seen the empty futility of perfection apart from relationship to PERFECTION itself.  What I knew before was false perfection, for it seeks to self-perfect apart from the only perfect, loving God.  Anyway, the past relationship surfaced when a brief and tense situation presented itself between two people I loved.  There was a miscommunication and I was in the room when it got brought up.  I tensed up and froze.  People aren't being perfect and this could get ugly!  It was resolved quickly but I was stuck in some kind of a daze and continued to be affected by this conflict.  I decided to go for a walk in the lush green countryside.  Glowing rays of sun greeted me and I felt the invitation to get whatever this feeling was off my chest.  I blurted out my "Why God, am I not able to handle conflict around me!?" For this was a recurring response I had when people weren't being-- well, perfect.
"You are afraid of imperfection showing itself, but it has to so that it can get resolved," God breathed into my heart.
Of course.  I breathed a relieved sigh.  That made sense, and I felt His kindness in this revelation of truth. 
As I walked on He also showed me that it was the imperfections in people and situations around me, that He uses like a tool to perfect me.  It is an inward change without striving and all through relationship to Him.  This is the true kind of perfection and it is the working of God when our hearts turn to Him in the midst of the tension of imperfection.  He then reminded me of these verses.  They contain the word perfect and fit my situation like a tailored suit.

"Consider it all joy, my brothers (and sisters*), when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have it's perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."
James 1:4 *added by me

It is the opposite of what one might conclude.  We don't see the perfection in dire trials, uncomfortable-ness.  A visit into the furnace, anyone?  Yay, It will make your gold more pure and shiny!  We have probably heard that analogy before if we have spent time in the Bible or church.  I sure did, and this struck me fresh when it was applied to THIS area of "trials" in my life. In this light I can rejoice when conflict and imperfections are present in myself and others, instead of shrinking and hiding from them.  I can choose to put my faith in God, who is my protector and perfecter. "The Lord will perfect that which concerns me." Psalm 138:8.  In the challenges of life we have discovered another area to grow, another area to be challenged in, another area where we can move in closer to our God.  We are all in a process of being perfected, and we need to embrace this process.  As my friend Anna put it today, we need to be ok with being unfinished, and people that are unfinished.  

When I end this relationship to false perfection, I can love God more fully and love imperfect humans (which includes myself).  I can actually give myself and people space to GROW.  This is great news for my marriage as well :)! As my fear of imperfection dissolves into an embrace of God's amazing process that perfects me, I become a free woman!  Nothing can really go "wrong" anymore and if it does, I have still have a perfect God to help me and work within me.  Ah, to retain this glorious perspective!  God is my safety, comfort and Lover, instead of "perfection".

He loves us!  

<3 Brooke