Perfection Doesn't Aim for the Stars

I know I've wrote about this before, but it's fresh in my mind and my heart again tonight, and this may be more for me than for anyone who reads this.
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I'm feeling a little bummed today. When I tell you why I'm bummed, you might laugh. It's honestly kind of a silly reason to be bummed, actually...

I got a 93% on a test today.

I know, I know, the majority - if not all - of you are thinking, "Man, I would've killed for a 93% on a test!" All of my friends in my undergrad years thought the same thing. I can't tell you how many times I heard them exclaim excitedly that they got a B- on a paper, or complain that the hours upon hours they spent studying still only got them a C on the test. I never studied, ever, and wrote my 5-10 page papers the night before or even the morning they were due...and always got A's, if not 100%.

But the times I didn't get those 100%'s were as agonizing to me as the C's were to my friends.

For me, not getting a perfect score was personal. It wasn't my paper that was flawed...I was flawed. Or else that's what I imaged my professors thought of me. The imagined disappointment on their faces when they read and graded my work was heart crushing. "I can't believe that Sara of all people would've gotten this wrong! I had such high hopes in her," and would shake their heads sadly as they marked off points in red pen. The 93 points I had received meant nothing...I had failed them on those 7 points.

But I could never talk to anyone about it. My friends wouldn't understand how anyone could be sad about an A-, and the only other "smart" people I knew were always a little smug and smart-assed about it. So for fear of seeming smug and smart-assed, I kept quiet, blushing and muttering an answer only if my friends asked what I got on the-most-difficult-test-in-the-universe. Looking back now, I guess the smug students were probably under the same sort of pressure I was feeling, but we didn't know how to explain it.

I couldn't really tell you exactly what prompted my perfectionism. As a kid I was shy and quiet around everyone except my family (who told me often that I was actually too loud), which led to a constant loneliness that I've struggled with since probably 3rd grade. But even shy kids want positive attention. Thinking about it now, I don't think I was really encouraged or praised for much growing up, my grades and maybe piano were the only times I got a genuine "That's great, Sara!" Everything else I did got, at best, a preoccupied, "That's nice, dear."

I got a C once on my 4th grade quarterly report card, and while I don't remember how my parents reacted, I definitely remember disappointment. Not necessarily from them or my teacher, but from myself. School was the one thing I was good at and I had - in my mind - failed. The one thing I gained approval for, and I had almost lost it. From then on out it was A's only; 100's were the best but I'd settle for 95's.

The thing about constant "perfection" though is that if you've already attained it and constantly maintain it, there's really nothing surprising or impressive about it anymore. It mostly becomes a little joke when I don't get a 100; "What?! Sara got a 99?! Oh, the horror!!" Said in jest, usually with a loving twinkle in the eye...but still the little arrows of accusation fly straight to my heart: "You're not perfect. They're not going to love you if you're not perfect. Why would anyone want to love someone who's not perfect? No one loves you."

And these lies started popping up in other areas of my life outside of school. A small stutter or misspoken sentence in a "normal" conversation in a group setting: "Imperfection!" the lies say, "It would be better if you said nothing at all. Better yet, just stay home next time, then you won't have to be around other people who would see your imperfection and therefore not love you." So I stay home. Boys I had a crushes on started dating someone else: "Imperfection! If you had been more beautiful, more noticeable, more perfect, he would have picked you! But don't let him see you, or else he'll see all your plain, stuttering imperfection and won't love you!" So I dress unnoticeably and don't talk to boys for years, watching my crushes all fall in love, get married, and have children with their beautiful wives.

But through the persistent love of several wonderful friends and mentors over the last decade, and I've finally begun to accept the Truth of who God has made me to be, and that He finds me beautiful and worth loving despite my "imperfections", and actually doesn't even see them because He's so besotted with me. By "begun", I mostly mean that I can say it out loud, and if I focus enough that all I see is His face I may actually believe it with my whole heart for a moment or two. He thinks I'm "more than just a beautiful mess" (to quote Matthew West) and it's messing with my heart...in a good way. But the scars still hurt, and lies that have been believed for decades are sometimes tricky to uproot fully. Sometimes when I think Jesus and I have finally gotten the last one pulled out, another root pops up and proves even trickier to dig out. Enter grad school.

This semester I started the Master's of Arts in Library Science program online through Mizzou. I love it!!! I don't know why it's taken me so long to start school again. I love learning, I love that feeling of figuring out something new and making connections to the things in my life that I've just been plodding through without understanding. God gave me as a beautiful gift a highly intelligent brain, and it feels great to be using it to it's full potential again.

And as you can imagine, up till now all of my assignments have earned me a 100%...until this test from last week. Instantly after seeing my grade on the test, my heart sunk and shame started creeping in again. I honestly opened up the test and quickly scrolled down to find the ones I'd missed, ignoring the 23 of the 25 questions that got full marks just to zero in on the ones I got wrong.

And right now I'm faced with a choice. Stew over this grade, and how it will affect my average for the class; or go completely against my own brain and heart and choose to believe something so radical I almost can't think it to type it out.........

I am still loved.....

and if possible I am loved even more so now simply because I dared to think it, despite the habit of self-hatred. It is so much simpler to just give in to habitual thinking, and my mind has been trained to despise myself when I am imperfect. But no...I am loved by my family and my friends, some of which are boys (no Dad, just because they are boys and my friends does not make any of them my boyfriend!! ;-P ).

But most importantly, I am loved by God...and in the end, that's the only thing that matters.

Bar...none.

There's a certain amount of stress that comes with being gifted. First off...it's really hard to admit. No one likes a show-off, and I've tried really hard not to be one. In college, my closest friends would work really, really hard for months on a paper and get so excited when they got a C+ or a B. It was so awkward to try and respond honestly when I was asked what grade I got; they all knew I wrote it up quickly the night before (or even that morning), and with little to no "effort" got a...."mumble mumble," "What was that, Sara?" "cough...100%...blush, cough cough, mumble."

Yes, I do a lot of things really, really well. But when I get applaud me for it, I don't feel a sense of pride or gratefulness. What I feel is pressure.

When someone sets a goal or a standard for themselves, we call it "setting the bar." Sometimes, this proverbial "bar" is really high, sometimes it's really low, and sometimes it's a goal that is within manageable reach. But as a person who God has somehow gifted to be good at almost whatever she does, I find myself frequently being commended as someone who has already reached what other people would call a "high bar."

Do you know how hard it is to retain your position in other people's measurements? This one time, in fourth grade I think, I got an F on an assignment. Since that moment, I think I've only ever gotten below a B once or twice. Just the mere thought of possibly getting a C would give me minor anxiety attacks. It wasn't that my parents were pushing me to get good grades; it was just that one moment of feeling their and my teacher's disappointment when I fell below their bar.

Another time in fifth grade I got in trouble in class for staring out the window during a lesson. The next day while we were in line, the boy I happened to like at the time talked to me for the very first time (even though we were in the same class and on the same recess two-hand touch football group) and said, "Man, I've never seen you get in trouble before." If I wasn't already feeling shame, I started to then.

Another time more recently, I was not as prepared as I thought I would be for a computer class I was teaching to seniors. I (in my opinion) bumbled my way through the whole lesson, believing the students to feel more confused than they were before they came, and only smiled at me out of pity. In all honesty, I probably did a great job, and they probably were genuinely smiling at me out of gratefulness for trying to teach old dogs new tricks (they are the most adorable and hilariously funny old dogs! love em bunches!!).

But sometimes it's hard to be the good girl. Sometimes I get so tired of people telling me how wonderful I am that I just want to scream. Other times, on days like yesterday and today, when I have so much to do and so many people to please by doing it well, I start to forget who I really am. My ability to empathize with other people tends to go out the window, along with my ability to care about what I'm saying and to whom I am speaking (and yes, I had to backspace to fix my own grammar) in favor of "I have to get all of this done, and it has to be done right, and I don't have time for anything else but doing it all perfectly to my perception of what your standards are...which is perfect." But when it offends my coworkers, or when I lose my normally natural (and very beautiful) smile to a panicked staring-into-the-distance frown, something is less-than-perfect in my world.

The Truth is that God gifted my hands to be good at a lot of things (just don't ask me to play basketball or do a cartwheel). And He gave me those gifts in order to bless those around me. Because I am empathetic to people's feelings and needs, and I love to be able to bless them in any way that I can. But when I am trying to be what everyone else thinks I am (or in reality, what I think they are thinking), it dishonors my Creator; essentially I'm telling Him, "yeah, You did alright, but I think their idea of me is a billion times better."

The Truth is...God is the Creator of a lot of things, but a "bar" isn't one of them. When He told us, "Be holy, just as I Am holy," (Leviticus 11:45) or "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect," (Matthew 5:48) it wasn't setting us up for failure, trying to reach an unattainable goal. I think our culture has been focusing on the wrong word: perfect instead of be. The Latin word for the verb "to be" is Esse, which can be found in the English word "Essence." What (I believe) Jesus was trying to say was, "Look, I made you; just BE who I made you to be, because I made you in My Image, which is pure holiness and perfect." So in reality, holiness and perfection should be as easy to us as breathing, because it's what we were made for. So why am I trying to hard to be perfect?

Someday, hopefully soon, I will stop trying to be the good girl...not in favor of being a bad one, but in favor of simply and beautifully just being me. I've been trying to stop trying (?) these last ten years, and I've had many people help me along the way. But it takes surrender on my part of my own standards, of other people's standards, and of my unhealthy desire to attain both. All I can do is look into His eyes and breathe. In, and out. In, and out. And smile, because He's smiling. That's all I really wanted, anyway.