Just a few days ago, my friends on Face Book, in CEO Moms, wwere talking about this very thing "prefection"!
Prefection can be a very dangerous thing! I know I use to "re do" what my child just did. Like she would make her bed and it wasn't perfect, so I just fixed it a bit to look better to my liking! I was always fixing the things she did or made, one day she looked at me, with huge tears rolling down her cheecks, and in a sobbing cry she said, "Mommy just leave it,it's my work! It's just fine! Leave it alone!" she barried her little head in my apron,on my lap. Sobbing her little heart out. I felt about two inches high, right then. and vowed I would never touch another thing, that my little five year old did again ever ever agin! I haven't either!
This was in an E-mail I received and it was so fitting to me. I just had to share it!
The Beauty of Imperfection
In my mind, I saw perfect little gingerbread houses all lined up in a row, looking much too good to eat. I quickly realized this family project would yield anything but perfect gingerbread houses and there would be more eating than architecture completed that night.
And it was beautiful.
There we were gathered ’round the dining room table with piles of graham crackers, tubs of frosting, and oodles of brightly colored candies, creating delicious memories.
No, these gingerbread houses did not step off the pages of some nationally syndicated cooking magazine, but to my children, that night was perfect.
How often my heart longs for perfection. I want those perfectly staged magazine ads. I want perfect hair and the perfect apron and the perfect kitchen. How often I fail to recognize that what I want does not exist and even if it did, I would not want it.
No memories are made in studio photo shoots of staged holidays with airbrushed models. And if I spend my life longing for an ideal that only exists in magazines and on television, I will have missed the beauty of my real life.
We must teach our daughters that perfection is not something to be found in the things of this earth. We must never get so caught up in our expectations that we fail to see the beauty in our limitations.
As my family laughed and frolicked that night, I was struck by how even my best attempts at perfection always fall miserably short, but if my heart and mind are focused on Christ, it is His love that shines through my imperfections and creates a beauty that far exceeds my expectations.
So, this holiday season, I seek Christ’s perfection and not my own.
And it is beautiful.
So please remember, It's OK if things aren't perfect for holidays or anything in your life....It's OK....It's OK just keep telling yourself that when you are temped to "fix" something your child has just done!
Merry Christmas everyone!
