The sigh coming from the kitchen table was laced with tears, frustration, and the exasperation that usually accompanies a complete lack of understanding between two people.
My sweet girl was spread out over a math assignment. She’d spent more than a small amount of time telling me with lots of animation how I was not helping her. “Like at all, Mom.”
The exasperated one continued, “I need to know what they are asking me here so I can get this question right.”
The math problem in question involved greater than or less than (“>” “<“) symbols and clearly my non-math teacher explanation was not cutting it. No matter how many times I resorted to the old “the alligator eats the larger number” routine, my girl wasn’t connecting the dots.
Her desire to get a perfect score on this homework assignment didn’t help either.
“The whole point of me doing this, Mom, is that I’m supposed to get them all right,” came the response to the alligator analogy – with extra drama added to the word “Mom.” The tears flowed more freely.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a moment like this with a diligent student sort of kid, then you’ll see the absolute folly of what I said next.
“Sis, the point of this assignment is for you to have extra practice. And when you practice, sometimes you’ll get something wrong,” I attempted to explain. “That just lets the teacher know what you still need some work on.”
Cue the absolute waterworks and cry-speak that no one could possibly understand.
Now, I don’t know about you, but from time to time I find myself in a similar emotional state. I can get caught up in the aim for perfection, missing the point of what I’m doing, and the inevitable frustration that comes when life hits and things don’t go like I hoped.
You know, those times when we put in the effort and things still go off the rails? The dinner you prepped, cooked, and somehow still burned. The budget you planned, tried to stick to, but still couldn’t make the ends meet. The meeting you’re ready for, but get caught in a side conversation making you late, flustered, and feeling ill-equipped. The laundry…don’t even get me started on everyone’s need for clean clothes all. the. time.
It is frustrating and discouraging when we try to set ourselves up for perfection just to feel like the rug was pulled out from under us removing success as an option.
And there’s the rub for me. I am wired in such a way that if I’m not careful, I can fall into the trap of believing if I can’t succeed there’s no point in trying. That is a dead end for any hope of a growth mindset.
Expecting perfection of my own making is the polar opposite of a humble, God-centered growth mindset.
I don’t know about you, but I often fall into the trap of a perfection mindset because I place a lot of weight on my own self-sufficiency. My pride fools me into thinking that I’m capable, strong, smart (hey, God made me that way, right?) and I can handle this….ALL of this.
This has the potential for disaster when self-sufficiency drives me to the edges of my own bandwidth. I keep adding to my plate those things I know I can master – because by now my pride is telling me to keep adding all that I have mastered – and loading my plate with second and third helpings seems only logical.
Very quickly, I am spinning trying to keep plates in the air that where never needed to be in my hands to begin with. Ironically, all the overloading of tasks I can do well and think I can manage on my own usually leads to none of those things getting my best.
And I have more than a slight suspicion I’m not the only one who does this.
The spinning, scrambling, and relying on ourselves is exhausting. In that exhaustion, the temptation to quit that actual things the Lord has placed in our hands is real. Weariness of our own creation is a special kind of tired, and an easy place in which I can lose sight of everything we are originally called to focus on.
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9
You know the recipe for not growing weary? Quit relying on ourselves!
We only stand a chance of success when we have surrendered ourselves, our lives, and our to do lists to the Lord. And that’s not after the fact when the commitments have all been made. That’s submitting to him as the decisions of whether or not to commit are in process.
When I am humble enough to realize I have no business creating my to do lists and when I am humble enough to know I do not do anything in own strength, then – and only then – am I able to work and live in the way the Lord calls me to.
Self-sufficiency is a great deceiver, and it helps fuel the pointless, exhausting mirage of perfection. My prayer today is that we can be humble enough to surrender our decisions to the Lord; that we will do the things – and only the things – he has called us to – whatever the prospects of success may actually be – knowing that when we rely on Him we will have the energy, focus, and ability to accomplish precisely what He intends.
