This I Believe*

I believe in imperfection. I believe that sometimes doing something poorly is better than not doing it at all. I even believe that sometimes doing something "well enough" is actually better than doing it perfectly. For instance, I could spend hours and hours cleaning my house to perfection and miss out on spending time with my daughter. Or, I could clean my house "well enough" and then go for a walk and watch my two year old discover butterflies and birdies and blossoms.

I believe that I can wait to take a family vacation until I can afford the perfect vacation or I can take a day here and a day there to build memories and connections with the ones closest to me. Life has a way of passing us by if we wait for perfect moments.

A friend of mine has a poster in her kitchen, it says something like this, "anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can do it well." I believe in that too. When I was in elementary school I quit taking piano lessons because I just wasn't very good at it. How I wish that I had been willing to do it "well enough" until I got better. How many things did I quit or never start because I was unwilling to accept imperfection? Now I play the piano and it doesn't really matter that I hit the wrong notes fairly often. These days I'm okay with imperfection.

Perfection is still a goal for a few areas of my life. I strive to be a perfect disciple of Christ. I want to perfectly follow His teachings. I would like to be perfect in my relationships, especially with my family. I fail, of course, but I'm learning to not give up the things that matter most just because I'm not perfect at them. And the things that matter less? I'm learning to do them imperfectly and to be perfectly happy with that.


*There is a series of essays produced for public radio entitled "This I Believe." Basically, essayists (from all walks of life, all ages, all political and religious persuasions, and all races) submit writings about a core belief and how that informs their life. I'm not ready to submit this for radio but I thought I'd share it with you.