The Imperfectly Perfect, even as the name suggests, is not something that is possible outside of the divine. It is a place of paradox, and there are many within our faith: the last shall become first, the first shall become last. Every mountain will be made low, every valley will be raised. The resurrection of the dead has taken place, new life has come from the place of destitution, and the old has become new!
The plans God has for each of us is great, and greater than what we can know or produce on our own. We only need to give in to His greatness, His goodness, and acknowledge that He is so far above and beyond what we can even ask or think or imagine: and that is precisely what he wants to do in and through us to a waiting, wearing and watching world that needs to see the supernatural at work in the places of chaos and dismay. Sit back and enjoy the action of the Spirit as he does what He alone can do!
We sometimes feel like outcasts within our own souls and lives. We do not know which way is the way to go in order to live our best lives, even before God. Our best place is to try not to “do.” We are baited by the belief that the more we do, the better things will be when in reality, the more we wait (on God), the better things will be.
There is an addiction to always being right that gets in the way of true follow-through. In the struggle to always come out on top, certain processes are never undertaken that would ultimately lead to different outcomes if they were followed to their logical extreme. The obsession to always be right is a sort of idolatry that focuses on self, and does not know the path of humility, which does not mind taking the time to complete something properly, regardless of how that process may look. So, it seems there is an inherent superficiality to the perfectionist quest.
The rewards of not being so miserly focused on self are great. This writer is still discovering what they are, in glimpses that reveal this truth. But it reality, it is something I am still discovering and will surely be pondering its mystery for a long time. Examples can show up in all kinds of ways. When we were renovating our kitchen and needed to replace countertops, we found there was an issue with the placement of new pipes relative to the back wall of the where the new cabinetry was to go. The plumber was trying to explain how many elbows in the line he would need to employ to get around the new sink pipe. My husband suggested that the pipes instead run along the back wall, and which would require the simply yet elegant extension of the countertop edge by a few inches. Not only was it impossible to tell the countertop was a little larger than standard, but it resulted in a nice extra ledge for placement of dishes and related things. What had seemed like a problem, when reframed, literally turned out to be a selling point for the kitchen.
Another example: when I leave things in a slightly jumbled mess, it seems I always have what is needed at my fingertips for that next unexpected event. When I am being too neat and trying to control every element, some of the mess required for there to be fertile ground for that next breakthrough or project simply isn’t there.
Trying to maintain a balance between order and a relative degree of not so much chaos as happy randomness is the goal.