Perfection is desired, but remember you have human characteristics to overcome

I love hanging pictures of my family — especially my kids — on my wall. I have a wall, in particular, where I hang special pictures of things that my boys have been involved in over the years. It makes me so happy to look at the different stages of life that those wondrous human beings have gone through, tracing their growth and how their interests have changed over time.

It’s no secret that I am a very proud mama. However, I’m an awful picture hanger. The pictures on my wall are not level, nor are they evenly spaced. It’s a perfectionist’s worst nightmare! It would bother me much more if the subject matter wasn’t something that I dearly love and desire to be on my wall — no matter what it looks like.

Recently, after sloppily adding more pictures to my display, God spoke to my heart. He said, “Do you think that I love you any less because you didn’t get the pictures straight?” I replied, “No, Lord.” He said, “Do you love Me any less because I didn’t help you get the pictures straight?” Again I answered in the negative. Then He asked, “Do you love yourself less, because you didn’t get the pictures straight?”

Honestly, I don’t remember answering the last question, because I knew what He was getting at. This week, God has been revealing the impossibly high standards that I have set for myself, and how disappointed with myself that I inevitably become when I can’t fully measure up to those standards. As I was standing there, shaking my head about yet another picture-hanging failure, He was reminding me to give myself a break.

When it comes to believing God for His promises to come to pass in my life, I will have to say that I have rarely measured up to the standard that I’ve set for myself. Then, in those moments when my faith has dipped to almost non-existent levels, the frustration that resulted from the pressure that I had placed on myself to always get it right dragged me down even further.

God has had to remind me lately that, while perfection should be my ultimate goal, I am still human, and I will never fully attain it on this side of heaven. I am in a process of growth. Therefore, it’s important that I learn how to show myself grace in those times when my performance is less than ideal.

I think that when we, as human beings, are passionate about something, it’s pretty natural for us to put pressure on ourselves to do things right. While applying a small amount of pressure can indeed help us to stay on track and press forward, when we demand nothing less than perfection from ourselves, we usually find that when we make a mistake, we end up shrinking away from our goal, rather than getting up, brushing ourselves off and running towards it.

God wants us to learn to be more concerned with the orientation of our hearts than we are with the perfection of our performances — knowing that when our hearts are directed towards Him, our performances will naturally steadily improve. He doesn’t want us to beat ourselves up every time we feel like we don’t measure up. He wants us to forgive ourselves and snuggle in a little closer to Him.

I don’t think any one of us can stand up and say that our walk of faith has always looked neat and in order. We all blow it from time to time. Sometimes we get lazy and allow things get out of alignment, but the important thing is that we keep looking forward to the bigger picture. If we keep our hearts directed towards God and forgive ourselves when we fail to live up to our own — often unrealistic — expectations, we will be able to look beyond our less-than-perfect performance to see the beauty of His love on display in and through us.