Perfect Schmerfect
by Kate Wicker in Family on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 6:00 AM
When I was 3, I fell and cut my mouth while playing in the backyard. I ran screaming to my mom with blood dribbling down my chin and onto my summer dress.
“Does it hurt?” Mom asked as she drew me into her arms to comfort my pain.
“No, Mommy,” I sobbed, “but I’ve ruined my pretty dress.”
It wasn’t the cut in my mouth, but the bright red blood splatters on my dress that threw me into despair. Or so the story goes.
To this day, I can’t stand it when I get a stain on a piece of clothing (being the mom to three stain-mongering kids under 4 will, I hope, reduce my stay in purgatory).
But it’s not only clothing stains that leave me feeling edgy. Unfortunately, it’s the stain of my humanity, my brokenness that can really get to me.
As a child, I stayed away from playing games unless I was guaranteed a win. In school, I had to earn top marks, or else I was a failure. As a young woman, I had to be a certain weight, log in a certain amount of number of miles on the running track and eat less than a certain amount of calories each day. Otherwise, I was weak.
Since becoming a mom, I continue to grapple with the inner critic in my head – whether it’s about my “baby” weight, the brownies I baked for my husband (were they as good as the ones my culinary whiz of a friend shared with us?), the glean of my kitchen sink, or my parenting skills.
At first glance, my pursuit of perfection might not seem like such a bad thing. After all, in many ways it’s what drives me to excel, to take care of my home, my children, my husband, and myself. Perfectionists tend to be a dependable, productive lot.
But don’t let Polly Perfect fool you. It’s taken me a long time to see that perfectionism is nothing more than a wolf clothed in sheep’s clothing. It is rooted in pride and vanity and is the ultimate way of playing God. He is perfect. I am not. Using “perfect” as my bar cripples me. When I focus on perfection, I’m opening the floodgates for negativity and dissatisfaction with who I am and where I’m at in my life. I’m also rejecting the way God designed me to be – human.
Thankfully, being an imperfect mother to three lovely but imperfect children is helping me to realize that in my quest to evade inadequacy, I’m only setting myself (and my children) up for failure.
I recall having one of many epiphanies (I can be a little dense, so God has to give me a lot of Ah-Ha moments) when my first child was around 15 months. She’d just emptied her bookshelf for the umpteenth time. Each time she left the carnage, I’d always patiently sort through the mountain of books and place them back on the shelves in alphabetical order, but I remember thinking, “Why am I wasting time organizing books that will soon be dumped back on the floor? This is so stupid.”
And so is trying to stay below a certain weight when I’m breastfeeding. Or keeping an exploring baby from making a mess during mealtimes. Or expecting my children to always use “inside voices.”
As I’ve grown into my mothering shoes, my desire to be a good mom many times supersedes my need for order and perfection. I let my babies smear food all over their faces. We have cleanup time at the end of the day, and I overlook the heaps of toys in my living room until that time arrives. I don’t make Mass a battleground; I quietly slip away if the baby is fussy or my toddler is on the verge of a tantrum
This doesn’t mean I don’t still have to fight my perfectionist impulses. (Nobody’s perfect. Ha. Ha.) But I’m working on giving myself permission to be human.
When faced with something less-than-rosy, my eldest has the tendency to say, “Oh well.”
I’m trying to learn to sometimes say that, too, when I fall short of flawlessness. I don’t mean “Oh well. I give up.” I’m not excusing my failings, my sins, my weaknesses, but I can’t wallow in the guilt. I can’t try so hard to be the epitome of what I define as perfection so that I constantly feel like I’m letting myself, my husband and my children down.
What I can do is to sometimes let it go and to recognize that there’s a big difference between trying to be perfect and striving for excellence. If, as a wife, mother, and Christian, I choose to work toward being a model of excellence and goodness, I imagine God will be well-pleased. And so will I.
—Kate Wicker is a failed perfectionist, mom and writer. She blogs at KateWicker.com.
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