my perfectionism

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
- John Wooden (mountain climber)

Why is that we allow our limitations to define us?  As humans, we tend to look at the things we can't do and mourn our weaknesses.  Instead, we should focus on that which we are able to do and celebrate that achievement.  This is easy for me to see when I am reading the learning journals and logs of my students, and yet so hard for me to put into practice myself.  My tendancy towards perfectionism denies me the freedom to acknowledge that I have strengths worth celebrating.

Moreover, it is in my weaknesses that I am able to find joy in an all-powerful God.  He completes me.  If I struggle to fill me . . . I will forever be struggling.  If I acknowledge that I am unable to be perfect, He becomes the center, the focus, and not me.  This is a relief.  This is a joy-giving, freedom-bringing realization.  So, why, therefore, am I perpetually forgetting this?

Father, be strong in my weaknesses.

"Instead, God has chosen the world's foolish things to shame the wise, and God has chosen the world's weak things to shame the strong.  God has chosen the world's insignificant and despised things--the things viewed as nothing--so He might bring to nothing the things that are viewed as something, so that no one can boast in His presence.  But from Him you are in Christ Jesus, who for us became wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, in order that, as it is written: The one who boasts must boast in the Lord."  (1 Corinthians 1:27-31)