So it’s Christmas, and in our household, it’s hard to forget that for even a moment. All we listen to on the radio is Christmas music, and we pretty much only watch Christmas shows on television. (With the occasional Dinosaur Train to keep the Goose happy.) We’ve already done quite a few Christmas crafts, and there’s more to come as almost everything Magoo is going to get on the Christmas calendar is some kind of $1 craft from Michaels. We eat, live, and breathe Christmas. And nothing could make me happier.
And it has been in this context that I’ve been thinking about things recently. The other day, I was struggling with the issue of perfectionism. It’s something I struggle with constantly.
The funny thing is that I never used to believe that I was a perfectionist. I thought that if I were truly a perfectionist then I would be more… perfect. I started to think of myself as a lazy perfectionist or a really bad perfectionist.
But then I started to learn that this is all part of the perfectionist trap. No one is more acutely aware of how imperfect a perfectionist is than the perfectionist herself.
So anyway, the other day I was getting overwhelmed with my faults. I kept thinking of error upon error and I was letting those thoughts consume me. I had gotten lost in them. I started to believe that my faults defined who I am, that I can never possibly be good enough because I just have so many flaws.
And then we were sitting in church on Sunday, and between answering Magoo’s questions and wrestling with the Goose to keep her in the pew, I came to a realization.
At the time, there was a family that was lighting the Advent wreath, and I was talking to Magoo about it. (She had just made her own Advent wreath in school a couple of days before.) We talked about how we were waiting for Jesus to come because on the very first Christmas, Jesus was born – he came to Earth.
And it all made sense to me for a brief moment. The whole reason for Christmas is imperfection. We cannot be perfect. And if we could be perfect, there would be no Christmas. Jesus was born in a stable some two thousand years ago to come save us. All of us. Because we are too broken to fix ourselves. We are all imperfect and flawed. There is no other way around that.
And that’s okay. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He knows we can’t. The trick is for us to know that.
And so that’s what I want to focus on over the next couple of weeks of Advent. As the Christmas song goes, “Love came down at Christmas time.” Love had to come down. Love had to save us. Because we can’t save ourselves.
So next time I fail to live up to my standards, instead of beating myself up, I’m going to spend a moment in gratitude, being grateful that I don’t ever have to be more than I am. That I can finally stop trying to be perfect because our imperfections were redeemed through a baby that was born that first Christmas Eve.