The Perilous Path of Perfectionism

Surgically Repaired Pole

The Friday of Labor Day Weekend, school was uncharacteristically not in session. Not sure why entirely. Not that I was complaining. Ramping back to school in session requires a decent amount of girding myself for the pressure.

I don't recall this ever being the case of being off that Friday. So, I subverted back to summer mode for a day. Drank a lot of coffee. Chilled around the house, then decided to go for a hike at the local 1 mile path around Lake Grubb. Since Pa. has been the equatorial rainforest this summer (I know, I mention it every week), the hike was a bit nasty.

It was hot, wet, slippery, and buggy. On top of it, since I am so freaking tall, I was clearing out the spider webs that most hikers pass under. I was using my walking pole to try and clear the way ahead. A flock of  mosquitoes and gnats circled me like satellites as I walked. When I got back to my car, I reflected how the hike had turned from a 99% win to something more like 60% positive and 40% negative. I thoughtlessly propped  my hiking pole against the car, took the key with shoelace off  from around my neck and wiped down with my hand towel, and beat it. Pronto. Felt like I was escaping 'Nam in a copter. Under fire. 

When I got home, no pole in the car. I went back in steps and deduced that I had left the pole behind  which meant that I had to head back to Grubb and get it before someone ran over it in the parking lot. So, I hustled back, knowing the each second mattered. I pulled into the lot. Didn't see the pole where it would have been. Out in the near distance though, I saw something blue in the clump of high grass beyond the parking lot. It was my mangled pole. Someone had tossed it there after road-killing it.

No worries, the pole still is sturdy despite initially having a pretty serious crimp in it. A little pressure from the clamps put it back into functional shape. I was still mad at myself for not first putting the pole back in my car before leaving. I am almost 55 years old. I shouldn't make mistakes like that. So, the final calculation of benefit vs. cost of the hike was 51% win and 49% loss.

Here is the point of this post. We all have an inner perfectionist inside, some more than others, that demands things to work out as we wish. While it tends to be socially forgivable sin, it is actually quite deadly to gratitude. The all or nothing wager, as Francis Schaeffer pointed out many years ago, leads to nothing. It is exhausting to be a total perfectionist, it is entirely exhausting to be in a relationship with a perfectionist. It causes people to give up. I will tell you from my many years of being a counselor nothing gnaws at gratefulness more than perfectionism. Ingratitude is the Spirit of Hell. We are not perfect. We are flawed sinners saved by Grace. Period. Pride is the source of perfectionism. I deserve better. No you don't. 

I hated myself for a minute, then moved on. I screw up a lot. Not always sin but certainly stupidity. I throw myself upon the mercy of the Cross. Jesus died for a reason. It was not an accident. Foretold before the beginning of the world. Why God decided to create the Universe while knowing the consequences baffles me. I don't plan to be able to figure this out.   

Of course, I am not extolling the virtues of slackardness and slothfulness. This is not on the polarity of all or nothing. Over Labor Day weekend up at a New York craft brewery, I was pondering the idiom of the glass half-full being an optimist and the glass being half-empty being the pessimist. As I stared at what brew which remained in my glass, I thought I am grateful to God to have anything!   

 Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him