I sometimes try to fool myself that I have it all together — then something happens and I’m reminded that I don’t.

I have this insatiable need to be perfect.

…..the perfect wife
…..the perfect person
…..the perfect non-perfect Christian

But then, it’s a Tuesday night, the milk’s gone sour, I don’t have dinner planned, there is nothing quick to eat, and we’re hungry.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this need.  How it drives me.  How it puts fear in me.

I’m less apt to try something if I’m afraid I won’t get it right…the first time.  I forget that the great poets, the great artists, the “great” wives had to learn from the ground up.  Most weren’t endowed with a natural ability that when their fingers first touched ivory keys they played music worth stopping to listen to.

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I wrote on my dreams list last week that I wanted to learn to draw.  I have no natural artistic talent, anything I do is by applying myself.  When I mentioned to Shawn I wanted to learn to draw but I didn’t know where to start he made a couple recommendations.  Yet, within me is the perfectionist that expects to pick up a pencil and create beautiful art.

I’m so afraid of not creating perfection, that I’m missing out on the trying and the learning process.

Perfectionism rots us.  It limits our potential.  It tells us we’re not good enough, and never will be.

I challenge you {and myself} to shake off this need for perfection.  Be brave and embrace the freedom in imperfection.

Are you a perfectionist?

What does/has a need to be perfect kept you from?

A couple months ago I started having pain in my right foot.  Similar pain to what I experienced in my left foot that led to my foot surgery 2 1/2 years ago.  I watched the pain for a few weeks and did my “best” to stay off of it, and to see if it got any better before I went to my dr.  It wasn’t getting any better and some days seemed to be getting worse.

I had my initial appointment a few weeks ago, where he put me on a regimen of anti-inflammatories.   I had my follow up appointment today and have had no improvement.  While the type of pain & level of pain can vary from day to day (Friday I was in pain, Saturday quite a bit, Sunday a little less, yesterday was good for the most part, & pain today) I’m still having the same amount of pain as I was when I first saw him.

He gave me a cortisone shot today and I’m to wear a “robot boot” during waking hours, with the exception of driving.

I’m asking for prayers for healing.  I really don’t want to go through surgery again.  It was very hard on me both physically & emotionally.  It would be much different this time as I wouldn’t be able to drive for three weeks if I were to have surgery.

Thank you for your prayers.  I go back on May 9th for another followup.  Would appreciate prayers for complete healing by then.

I felt scratchy inside yesterday.

It’s difficult to describe/understand this feeling unless you’ve been there.

A few adjectives I’d apply:

out of sync
discombobulated
bristly

It’s a feeling that seemed to carry over from Sunday and into today as well.

Yesterday, was a day I was hard pressed to find gifts in my life.  But that didn’t stop “fate” from assigning a prompt of thankfulness for yesterday’s Art Journaler prompt.

No, it would have been too easy had the day been assigned a picture of the sky, rather than one of gratitude.

I’d come home with an arm full of groceries and my scratchy insides to #secretmessages from a friend that speaks to my soul.  They were words I needed.

I stole some time from my evening to work in my art journal.  I needed to get out the hard words; and search for the gratitude that I know is inside.

Writing a quick note to myself I put down this feeling of scratchiness, and three gratitudes to also serve as reminders when I’m feeling less than grateful.

And I told myself it’s okay to be scratchy inside.  He can work with that.

Late Summer/Early Autumn 1996
I stood there in the dark, my room partially illuminated by the lamp by bed – a futon with a green mattress.  My desk across from me with my typewriter and miscellaneous junk.

I looked at the couple pills in my left hand and the bottle in my right, contemplating my future.

.

A few months prior…
I’d applied to work at a day care facility at the beginning of 1996.  They were willing to intrust into my hands a class of three year olds that I would create lesson plans for and teach.

I worked my way through finger printing, back ground check, and Tuberculosis testing.  I took it with great ease when my TB test registered just shy of being positive.  They said I was cleared, but I needed to come back in six months to be retested.

I wound my way through the rest of spring and early summer.  Snow storms, loading grade school children on and off the school busses, and teaching colors / shapes / numbers to a class of three year olds that had stolen my heart.

I soon found myself back at the county clinic getting a repeat TB test.  Within a few minutes the results were obvious as a giant welt formed on my arm.

I remember a rush of the unknown sweeping over me those next couple weeks.  Fears of what might or would happen.  Isolation. Being torn away from my friends.  I remember waiting for an chest x-ray and being relieved when the results returned that the illness was inactive.  I only had a positive skin test.

I had to go on medication.  Horrible medication.  For the first several weeks I had to have blood work done to insure my liver was not getting damaged.  I gained weight – lots of weight.  My already acne prone skin broke out even worse.  And I fought depression like I never had previously.

Fast forward back to late Summer/early Autumn 1996
This wasn’t the first time I’d thought about ending it all, and it wouldn’t be the last; but it was the closest and realest I’ve ever actually come.

I remember standing there in my room looking at the few in one hand and the many in the other.  I remember thinking, “I could just take all these pills and be done with it.”  I remember shuddering back to reality and quickly putting the lid on the bottle and taking the couple Ibuprofen for my headache.

They say that suicide is a cowardly act, and in part I agree.  But I’ve looked down that barrel and know with great intimacy how much it feels that sweet release will come if you were just separated from life.

It’s been just over 15 years since that night.  I still battle with how much easier everyone else’s life would be if I wasn’t a part of it; but thankfully I’ve never found myself in the place I was that night.

It seems over the last few weeks random memories from my childhood have risen to the surface amongst the grownup things that are at my mind’s brim, like Excel formulas and meal planning.

We lived on a dirt road.  When I say dirt, I mean dirt that flew everywhere and had to be graded.  We were towards the bottom of a hill.  At the top of the hill lived Helen.  What I remember most about Helen was her chastising me once when I wiped the excess butter off the knife on the edge of the butter tub.  She also taught me how to vacuum – in that you keep going over the same spot until you can no longer hear particles being sucked up.

We lived on a triangular quarter acre that was somewhat dense with Pine Trees, Junipers, & Manzanita Bushes.  I remember I had a blue plastic kite that I believe had Tony the Tiger on it.  I have a vague memory of running up the hill, kite string in my hand trying to get the kite to fly.

This is one of those memories that’s surfaced.

My childhood was good while concurrently being not good.  I’m learning in my approach to “middle age” that a lot of what went on when I was a child, is affecting who I am as an adult.  I never really did take care of the  issues that made being a child as pleasant as being run over by a steamroller.  My circumstances were simply changed, and I moved on with life.  Never thinking that 20 some years down the road I’d see their effect in my relationships.  I know one day I’m going to have to deal with the skeletons in my past.  I know this.  And I’m searching for the place when I’m okay with dredging it up.

But I want to share my story with you.  It won’t happen all at once.  It may not even fully come out in the next year, but I figure if I share little portions here and there as I’m ready to put it on the table – eventually it will all come out.  And I won’t have to be afraid of it any more.

Tomorrow I will share one piece of my story.  It doesn’t occur when I was a child, I was 21.  But it’s still part of my story.

I have a scar on the palm of my right hand.  It’s been burned, stabbed with knives, and most recently burned by a canister of Dimethyl Ether for at home wart removal.

For years I’ve been unable to bend my thumb backwards because of the amount of scar tissue that has built up.  The most recent injury has been troublesome.  Especially in the much drier air of winter.  It will crack and cause painful open wounds.  I carry Neosporin in my purse to help heal and re-heal.

But it never really completely heals.

And that’s the way scars of the heart are.

Scar tissue forms over the cuts and the hematomas, but without warning scabs are ripped from tender flesh and pain returns.

We are forced to walk with these scars.  Forced to live out life with the pain that they cause.  We take care, we work through the pain because we know have to.

Someone I know is working though the pain and the reopening of scars from sexual abuse as a child.  It pains me a great deal to watch as she remembers.  As her heart and her soul are ripped in a thousand pieces.  However, I know that in having to face the pain she heals just a little bit more, even knowing the scars never will completely heal.

And that’s what we do.  We apply salve to our wounded hearts.  Truth over lies.

It’s not easy, but we know if we want to heal, if we want to come out stronger we have to choose to walk through the pain.

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