The Unbearable Burden of 'being perfect'!

I write this blog from my heart knowing that it is not perfect in its use of language or in its content. I write this blog post with a very heavy heart for myself and a deep longing to stop living life the way it is for me right now. I do not want to carry the load of being Perfect anymore and I do not want to pass that load onto my children or demand it any longer from my husband and from those around me. I know that this desire and the working out of it in my life will in itself be a messy work. I recognize that for some in my family , the need to be perfect comes from within and is fed from without. Everything shouts - YOU NEED TO BE PERFECT. - buy this ; get that ; change this; swap that ; paint here ; tweak there ; diet , run , sleep, have sex, have more leisure time, time alone..... etc, etc, ( please dont mis hear me. Lots of these things are right and good in their place).

Here goes....

This morning at the children's nursery school , a little boy I know quite well, had a T-shirt on that said'" I am perfect like my dad". Now in of itself this just a little boys shirt and we all get what it is saying but it kind of summed up for me some of the things I have been thinking around the idea of Perfectionism and "being Perfect".

One of the big messages today is this one.... It is an important life goal to gain perfection in all areas of life. No we may not have bought whole heartedly into this idea but there are glimpses of it in our lives if we really look and lift up those little corners. We are encouraged to start with our selves. The perfect body ; no fat, no flab, no stretchmarks, not to much sun just the right amount of exercise and healthy eating on all levels. Go Organic if you can and vitamins, doctors check-ups and the list goes on and on..... No dont get me wrong here, being healthy is good and right. I am using these examples to illustrate the bigger idea. The pursuit of the Perfect Body which then leads you to the perfect partner. Following on from this the Perfect Home, Car, Dog, job , bank, bank balance, and the list is endless. Depending on age and stage we could all find ourselves along the continuum of the line of perfection. Which leads to the perfect child and the perfect friend for the child which then leads to the perfect schooling system and the Perfect school and etc... etc.

I am a christian woman and so I find the idea of perfection in christian thinking on life ; in christian books on marriage, parenting, schooling, discipline and the like. The pursuit of the Perfect Life surrounds us.

There are many who help us on the way to being perfect. Gyms litter the landscape; health food shops ; educational toy shops; sport coaching ; life coaching ; self - help book shop shelves ; magazines and if all else fails there is always my friend 'google'the like. So help in gaining the perfect this or that is close at hand. Much of this stuff is written and put forward by well meaning people. Being Perfect is big business.

( Once again, please dont misread me. If you read me at all :)I think some of these things have great value and are good to do ; read and enjoy.
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The pursuit of' being perfect' is a burden for humanity. All around I interact with people who are exhausted on every level. We say things like ," it is the time of year" or " I Just need more sleep" -( which may be true), but I wonder if more and more if the pursuit of the Perfect is not what is exhausting us. It is so tiring fighting for something which is not attainable.
Here is the crux of the thing about searching or working for The Perfect is that when we can not find it ; hold it; keep it; have it or when the perfect partner turns out to be not so perfect and the perfect baby screams all day ; the perfect profession pays so very little or the perfect house begins to date what do we do then?

I suspect the desire for The Perfect Life is modern, Western Man 's desire to know God. God is Perfect and all he does is perfect.
He has a perfect plan for mankind.
It is this.......He purchased for himself ; us weak, weary, rebellious and broken people.
He did this by giving himself to die on a tree for our sin against him.
It seems so far fetched and so unreal and frankly so yesterday.
But the reality is that God used that which is foolishness to us - he chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise and the weak things of this world to shame the strong.
What seems to be weak and simple is actually the God of the Universe's Perfect Plan for weak and sinful man.
Here is the beautiful thing We can know this perfect God.
Ill say that again. We can actually know God.
To Know God is to accept God's perfect way in sending his son Jesus to die on the cross for our rebellion against him ( God that is) and in return we receive from God many things; but for the purpose of writing about The Perfect Life, I want to focus on one thing we receive.

We are set free!! We are free to live our lives for God. We are free to live our lives loving others. We are able to be not so perfect ; and live in a not so perfect world with not so perfect children, friends, relatives and spouses. We ourselves can be not so perfect because we are free. Yes, we must work hard at life in all its areas. But the thing is , when we mess up and when our kids mess up and when our friends mess up and ....and ... and... we are free to keep loving , forgiving and helping each other. We are free to never give up.

If you like I feel burdened by the false desire to Be Perfect , be encouraged to seek the One who is Perfect himself and who is able to set you free to live.

The Collage on Canvas Workshop.

On Friday Georgi came to try hand at the collage on canvas workshop. Here is what she created.

Here are some of the Canvas creations we made on Monday!!!

The world cup flavour shines through on this canvas!

Here Renette used mixed media .

The Collage on Canvas Workshop

On Monday night I invited a few friends to come over and spend an evening working on a canvas of their own. The aim of this fun evening was for us to experiment with making pictures made of a variety of materials and for these creative friends to feed back to me their ideas on the whole project. And so The Collage on Canvas Workshop is launched!!



These Photos show my friends hard at work creating their collage on canvas masterpieces.



















Part of the way through the evening.

Back to school.

Today is the first day of the fourth term of school. It is the 4th of October 2010. A point in time. A day to enjoy and to remember. It has been a day full of all sorts of excitement. I use this word ' excitement' in the extreme and cynical sense. It has been a day worth forgetting except for this..... It has been a day where I have sensed the work of the evil one on many fronts. Active and alive. But then God.....

God gives us this .......
The dinner time conversation. I sit down with the boys to Woolf down the dinner set before us ( by me of course), and we begin to chat about heaven and well, hell too. I am reading them the story of David and Goliath in the childrens bible. It is a great story to tell and a great story for young, exciting minds. One thing leads to another and we get to talk about hell and Gods grace. Of course the two are linked in my thinking and so they flow one from the other. Hell - a place of God's right judgment and a place devoid of his grace. We all contemplate our call from him and all decide, unanimously, that Hell is a place we do not want to go. In fact, Samuel said, I want to keep trusting Jesus. He has grasped the very real and glorious alternative. To spend eternity with Jesus and to do so in the new earth is where we aim to be. A glorious end to an awful day.

Who Let the Dogs Out?

We are dealing at the moment with unreasonable neighbours. If you have ever had this experience, you will know how stressful it is. This is the issue at hand...

About 4 months ago we received a handwritten, anonymous, rude and threatening letter in our postbox.We chose to ignore it as it was anonymous. Several weeks latter a policeman arrived on our door step with a further complaint. He implored us to deal with the issue as he has real crimes to solve. The issue: Our dogs bark to much and too loudly just well, they bark. The accusers are a couple opposite our home. A couple I have had several conversations with over the year they have lived here. A couple who felt they would rather send a threatening letter and then a policeman than come and have a neighbourly chat about their concerns.

So we sit now with a problem. The problem is this. Their demands are unreasonable. Their tone and attitude is unreasonable and their actions have been unreasonable. Yet we need to be reasonable and try in every way to live at peace with them. So this is my mission. To silence the dogs. I'll let you know how that works out.

"being me"

I have been doing some thinking this weekend about what it means to be a person. A living , breathing, human being. Furthermore, what does it mean to be a woman. After all, that is what I am. A humans being, woman. What is that all about? What is it to be fully human and fully woman. I guess my thinking has been sparked by the horrendous news of woman and children being trafficked from countries like Nigeria to The Ivory Coast. These kinds of news stories always, always leave me feeling cold and lifeless. I find them so sad. What is the value of life? What is the value of human life? what on earth does that look like? Well, I know for sure it is not bound up in the buying and selling of human beings. But what is it. Do I.... Do you .... have value and what does that look like
????

In the past, I would have struggles to find good and lasting reasons that had much depth. But now that I am a Christian I find I have enormous and lasting value as a person. This is the value that God has given me because I was his design; his idea from the start and included in this is a good and lasting plan for my life. In Christ I find my value.

John 15:16
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.

I have been chosen; chosen by the living God to be his. I belong to him and in him I have immense and great value. So when I stumble and the voice of the world we live draws me in; seducing me with false ideas of what it means to have value as a person. When the outer facade of the body is called upon to be the most valuable possession I have; when the fear of having failed yet again to measure up in this increasingly women dominated, women achieving world - when this fear presents itself to me and I deem myself a failure who has nothing to give; I am reminded by God's living word that I have value in him and through him and because of him. All praise be to God.