Not to be confused with the works of Jane Austin, which to be honest I haven’t read.  I have never thought of myself as a prideful person or a perfectionist.  I never looked down on others for having less, or not having a prestigious career.  I also wasn’t in constant pursuit having a perfectly cleaned home, I didn’t have to have straight A’s in school growing up.  I never felt like pride and perfectionism were things that I struggled with until the Lord revealed to me that these were things that I actually do struggle with.

As I said above, I was viewing pride through the window of I don’t think less of others because of their circumstances.  I didn’t stop to consider that I was being prideful every time I let fear of embarrassment keep me from doing something.  Let me tell you friend, that struggle has been so real.  I have let the fear of embarrassment keep me from so much in my life.  From a young age all through adulthood.  I have simultaneously been the girl that didn’t care what people thought and yet I also cared far too much!  I didn’t care what people thought about my old beat-up truck at 16 years old, but I also took a zero on a class assignment where I had to portray a certain character in front of the class.  What a confusing and complex mess of emotions.

I have also let the fear of not doing something well enough (perfectionism) keep me from doing things in life.  In retrospection it seems completely ridiculous but it’s true.  Here is an example of this ridiculousness.  Say I wanted to exercise and eat better.  Common goals for lots of people, right?  If I had planned my exercise for after work that day but then I ate poorly at lunchtime, well then what’s the point of working out since I messed up my diet?  Or I messed up my diet by eating something sweet guess I shouldn’t bother trying to eat well the rest of the day.  Listen, I know this logic is flawed, horribly flawed.  But I have had these thoughts before.  It took the Lord revealing it to me for me to see it for the insanity that it is. 

“Don’t let what you can’t do intefere with what you can do.”

One of the many ways that the Lord helped me learn these truths, was around the Holiday season I was listening to my favorite local Christian radio station, and they shared an anonymous quote.  “Don’t let what you can’t do interfere with what you can do.”  Isn’t it amazing sometimes how something so simple is so amazingly profound.  Clearly, I have repeatedly been guilty of letting what I couldn’t do interfere with what I could do.  I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to be so focused on perfectionism and pride, that I miss an opportunity to serve the Lord.  Not saying I want to be someone that only produces subpar work because I just want to get it done, or I only want to give halfhearted effort towards anything.  I have always believed the old saying “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well”.  But that’s not really what I mean by not focusing on perfection, I mean that sometimes our best doesn’t match the ideal image of what we had in our head.  If we gave it our best, then that’s good enough.  We must stop thinking that that ideal image is the only acceptable outcome.  If we waited for everything to be exactly right to start or wanted to be an expert right away very often, we won’t ever begin.

Here is an example of perfectionism preventing me from moving forward.  In 2024 I chose a word of the year for the first time.  My word for 2024 is discipline.  A tool I have started using to help me keep track of my goals etc, is a planner.  After over thinking it for far too long, halfway into January that is.  I finally chose one.  I also purchased a package of colorful pens.  I was so excited when the package finally arrived.  Only to be faced with feeling a bit lost looking though its thick crisp pages, with its thoughtful categories.  I thought I am not organized enough to use this planner like this planner is meant to be used.  For a day or two these types of thoughts prevented me from utilizing this lovely planner.  Until I finally decided I needed to use it because it cost too much money to just sit there doing nothing.  Also, it’s not doing me any good not using it, so why not use it?  Is my handwriting going to be beautiful in it? No.  Am I going to mess up on a category or something? Probably. But I have to try.