Perfection

Peter, a linchpin friend, made me aware of Brene Brown, a shame researcher at the University of Houston.  One of her books is The Gift of Imperfection which I have devoured several times, sometimes consuming in great gulps and sometimes in slow sips.  In-between gulps and sips, I’ve also pondered Dr. Brown’s wisdom about perfection and imperfection, and the often destructive role expectations around those two concepts can play in our lives.  Especially our relationships.

Lo these many Tuesdays ago (which is our family phrase for years ago), when I was starting a new job that I was largely ill-prepared for, my mentor Beth gave me some brilliant wisdom:  “You’re going to make mistakes.  Own them, fix them, and move on.”  I’ve used that wisdom repeatedly over the years both in my own professional journey and as a signpost for how I deal with those I work with.

It has only been recently however that I’ve taken a hard look at myself and how I use or don’t use that wisdom in the most tender of relationships: my family.  Particularly my children.

It’s easy to rejoice and celebrate.  It’s relatively easy to deal with minor deviations from perfect behavior.  It’s also relatively easy when a child is young enough to be picked up and whisked off to their room for some time-out.  But as your children get older and move towards independence, it gets really hard.  The balance between letting them make decisions and mistakes, and the two-fold poke in the eye of shielding them from pain and looking good as a parent is anguishingly tricky.  Add into that the tension between looking like a grown-up and acting like a grown-up, and you have a tightrope walk worthy of any circus.

I don’t know about you but my tightrope is generally not taut enough for very effective balancing and walking.  I realized this full face-on the other day in the harsh way I approached my daughter over her summer schedule.  I realized that while she is unbelievably confident in many areas of her life, she is also her mother’s child and finds it painful to enter into areas of life which either are unknown or unfamiliar or where one could be rejected or even just feel rejected.  Where the “F’only-eye” sisters live.  You know.  “If only I had” and “If only I hadn’t”.  Where perfection is the goal and imperfection is complete failure as a person.  The Land of Second-Guessing.

And then MY imperfection hit me hard enough to square me up again.  I needed to help her walk through and talk through and figure out HOW to do some things that she just didn’t know how to do.  It wasn’t laziness on her part or lack of motivation or desire.  It was fear of failure.  Fear of being imperfect.  In the midst of all the bravado that is teen-age, there is an underlying fear of failing, of disappointing, of not being good enough.

We do our children a disservice when we don’t teach them that failure is part of life.  That sometimes, often, you have to take a deep breath and start again.   Or fix something that is broken or messed up.  And that it doesn’t make you less of a person.  It makes you a better person and a person that others want to be around because their imperfections have company.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not advocating that we protect our children from consequences and responsibility.

What I am advocating is in the midst of consequences and responsibility and owning our mistakes and fixing them as best we can, that there be grace for the moment.  An understanding that they will always be loved and they always have a place at the table.  That we are all Prodigals – all of our lives.  And that we can all come  home if we allow ourselves to do that.

Blessings.