For the Love of Perfect

Nothing says “perfectionist” quite like hanging 24 identical white frames in a grid pattern on a wall.

Nothing says “delusional” quite like realizing you live on a base where multiple sonic booms a day will rattle your house in its very foundation, effectively knocking every single one of the pictures you so carefully hung out of position (except for the ones attached by 3M tape—which somehow makes the whole arrangement look worse).

I like to tell people that having five children has ruthlessly beaten the perfectionist out of me, but some days that desire to have all the lines straight and corners neat still rears its head. And I don’t always think that’s a bad thing. Sometimes the longing for perfect can be a taste of what we have to look forward to in heaven.

But we live in a broken world. Perfectly hung pictures get knocked askew by war machines hurtling through the air at unbelievable speeds.

And the truth is: the point is not perfection.

Perfection can be nice. There’s that sigh of contentment some of us get when everything is in its place, done the way it should be. Suddenly, the perfectionists among us feel that we can relax. Our skin is no longer trying to curl off our bodies as we eye the dirty sock child number two left wadded up underneath the couch.

We can breathe.

But perfect is not sustainable (at least not here). Child four will walk through the house eating crumbling biscuits. Child one will discover there’s a clog in the vacuum and dismantle it in the middle of the foyer. Child five will leave a trail of tiny rubber bands from one end of the house to the other (we no longer wonder why the vacuum is clogged). And what is the alternative?

The alternative, the perfect world, would really involve no one but us. No one to put the pans away in the wrong cabinet. No one to jab canyons in the tub of margarine. No one to “forget” to make up the beds and hang up the towels and put the cap back on the toothpaste.

And so we see that while perfection can be nice, it must always take a back seat to relationships. We choose the conversation with the crying child over getting the blog post written earlier in the day. We choose fourteen kids playing hide and seek in the house (with walkie talkies) over eating dinner “on time”. We choose making the phone call even if what we think we want is ten minutes of absolute, uninterrupted, perfect quiet. We choose “good enough” for a project so that we actually have time and energy for the people in our lives at the end of the day.

And we see this modeled for us by God. Heaven was perfect—Christ left it so that He could make a way for us to be with Him. And this says far more about who He is than it will ever say about who we are.

So yes, I see in myself the desire for perfection. After all, I follow a Savior who told me to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). And the longer I do, the more I see that the best and clearest way to pursue a perfection that reflects God’s is through my love for others, not in projects, performance, or presentation (even if sometimes we can show our love for others through all those things).

Here is what won’t last: the schedules in our bullet journals, the swept and mopped floors, the empty laundry hamper…the rows of perfectly spaced pictures (now crooked) on our hallway walls. It’s not that these things aren’t worth our effort, but that they. are. temporary.

But here’s what will last: our love for God and our love for others.

You may be a picture straightener like I am, brushing your teeth on schedule (even if you have to use your finger), insisting on a fully set table (even when you’re marooned on a tropical island), but I bet you’d rather be known for loving others well (even if none of us do it quite like Jesus does) than for your perfect hospital corners or your perfectly folded fitted sheets (the magical unicorn of housekeeping) or even your perfectly mannered children.

I know I would.

And maybe that’s worth working towards.

We can’t fully beat the perfectionism out of ourselves (no matter how many kids we end up with), simply because we were created in the image of a perfection-loving God. But we can learn to channel our own perfection-loving tendencies towards perfectly loving those around us.

And the great thing is that love done well won’t get knocked askew…no matter how loud the sonic booms get.