Revelations from the Struggle

A Degree of Perfection A friend lent me a book to share with my son called the Perfect Thanksgiving. It was a cute little book about two families and their version of Thanksgiving. One family was poised and wonderful with great manners and a well-dressed mom. All the visitors were polite and the children were so good it was creepy. The other family was the opposite in every way: wild kids, mom in jeans and my favorite, burping, fighting, happy guests. I could identify with this group. As we read the book, my son and I laughed. We saw our family in this second family, right down to the uncle with the long stories we all knew by heart! This book came to mind as I received a Christmas letter from a college friend. The letter shared the usual Christmas greeting as well as an update on her life over the past year. As I read about her life and its relative perfection, I began to look at my own situation and wonder what was really going on! As I read about her children, I got the image of two little people playing sweetly at her feet with a dolly and a truck as she and her husband looked on. My fantasy was interrupted by the loud screech of my son as he chased his dad with a cubs bat (padded of course). I quickly put my thoughts away and went to join the ruckus in the living room. Over the next few days, my mind would drift from time to time back to my friend’s letter and I couldn’t help but compare her life with mine. She was now a stay at home mom who would sub on occasion and actually had time for a hobby! She was active in worship, and her health and marriage were great. I saw myself working full time, feeling quite overwhelmed just by the day to day. As of late my hobby was trying to get in six hours of sleep. I saw myself squeezing in my prayer time in the shower, working out in the wee hours of the night, and hiding that bat from the boy! Well, you should know I pouted and complained to anyone who would listen about how I deserved better. Why wasn’t my life perfect? I was a good person. I loved the Lord. I , I ,I ,I ! I spent so much time looking at what I thought I didn’t have, I almost missed what I did have. I looked up the words perfect and perfection and I found the following: Perfect-finished, complete; fully informed, completely skilled; faultless in grammar denoting a tense which expresses an act completed to accomplish; to make perfect, to make fully skilled. Perfection- a state of being perfect; an excellence perfect in its kind. This only sent me to lower place in spirit. Finished! I was so not finished, faultless or fully informed. Every day was a day of “Wow! How did I even make it through?” What was I to do? The day after Christmas, my husband and son went to the zoo to see the zoo lights. I spent that quiet time pampering me. But after a few hours and a few loads of laundry, the house was too quiet. Just as I was really missing my guys, they burst in the door singing a rousing rendition of “Party like a Rock Star” and the boy had a new drum machine. The house was again full of sound: laughter and chasing (this time with drumsticks). I received total understanding five days later as we brought in the New Year, me and my two guys on our comfy old couch. As the ball dropped, I looked to my left and watched my husband sleeping and thought, if he was any other person the little one on my lap would not be who he is. God told Paul “My grace is sufficient.” You see Paul had asked the Lord to remove the thorn in his side three times. But it was the struggle of doing God’s will and fighting the good fight in spite of his pain that gave Paul the victory. It was with and by God’s grace he did the Lord’s will. Is my life perfect? Will it ever be? The answer to both questions is unimportant. The only thing that matters is that I do God’s will for others, my family and myself. The lesson I learned is that there are degrees of perfection. Just like the Thanksgiving book said, every family is different, but through Christ’s redeeming love we all appear perfect in the eyes of God. Dear Lord, I thank you for the imperfection in my life. It is through this imperfection that I see you working in my life. I thank you that you see me not as I am but as Christ allows us to be seen. I thank you that you have placed me in the situations I have been through. It has made me who I am. Lord, I thank you for every struggle and every wrinkle in my life. I have received victory in spite of everything. Now Lord help me to continue to look to you in all I do and say. Lord, I give you my life, thorns and all. Have your way in Jesus name. Amen.