Where did this idea of perfection come from?  You know, the idea you need to be the perfect wife and mom and have the perfect body, eat perfect meals and have the perfect home. When did those thoughts begin?

Did it start in elementary school when we started getting grades? We worked for the A. The 100%. Did that warp our thinking into striving for an A in our personal lives? Do we think we’re being graded on how well we cook or decorate?

Should we blame the internet for feeding the need for perfection? I know it played a big role in my life.  If we didn’t have blogs and Pinterest and Facebook to show us all the ways we should be perfect, maybe we’d all be a little happier.

I’m not sure where it comes from, and each of us have different roots our perfection stems from. But I do know I’m learning to overcome this need to be perfect.

The root of the word “perfect” means finished or complete. For me, this is what I strive for so often. I want to arrive at my goal. I want to be finished and complete.

I remember a meeting in college where we shared our spiritual journeys with a small group. We just made a little timeline of what our relationship with the Lord looked like throughout our lives (highs and lows, pivotal moments etc.). I remember thinking how horrible it was that here I was a college student who had grown up in church all her life, but wasn’t a perfect Christian yet. I mean, I wasn’t even reading my Bible every day. That’s what perfect Christians do.  Right? How had I not arrived yet?

Then our leader said something that stuck with me. It started to change my perspective. She said, “Our spiritual journeys won’t be complete until we get to heaven. We’ll be on a journey all our lives.”

That was hard for me to wrap my mind around. I need goals. I need to meet a goal and move on to the next one. I wanted to be a perfect Christian and then move on to perfecting other areas of my life.  Perfect student, fiance, wife, mother….each role needed to be perfected before moving on to the next.

But it just can’t work that way. We’re on a journey. A journey that lasts all our lives. We’ll always be moving and changing going through different phases and roles in our lives. We can’t “arrive”. It just can’t be that way.

But we can do our personal best and give ourselves lots of grace. We can stop comparing ourselves to others. We can be content with what we have and how God designed us. We can be present and engaged here in the now instead of wishing we could be five steps ahead.

Today, I hope you can throw “perfect” out the window. I hope you can see life as a journey. A journey with highs and lows and pivotal moments. A journey with lots of grace.