An Imperfect Life

I'm not perfect.

If trying could make one perfect, I'd get an A+. I tried until I fell down again and again from weariness, always falling short.

I tried to be a good daughter to avoid conflict with my step-dad. I tried to make my mom happy.

Then I got married. Surely my husband would mend the rips and tears in my soul.

He didn't.
He couldn't.
He wasn't perfect either, although closer than me.
I tried to make him fill me up. I begged and nagged, pleaded and criticized. To no avail.

My husband wasn't God and God wouldn't let him be.

My church and my children became my heart's focus. How I longed for their approval! I worked hard and expected a lot, too much. Too much from them, too much from me.

I lived in the wilderness of expecting too much from myself and never being enough.

Why is all this coming up now? Vacation season is upon us when we will all be together - children, grandchildren, dogs, and rainy days at camp.

Words spoken by my children over the years ring in the ears of my memory. Words pointing out my cracks, my failures, my shame born from wishing I could have been different then.

Yesterday I read words penned by my own hand in a journal 27 years ago. Those words revealed the struggles of a young woman attempting to mold young lives when she herself was broken.

Jamie Buckingham was one of my favorite authors back then. He penned these words and I wrote them in my journal decades ago.

"There are certain wilderness lessons that cannot be learned in the rush of life...only in the slow process of trudging...they must be learned slowly. They must be walked out through the experience of time."

I feel like I spent most of my life trudging in the wilderness. Progress was a slow process.

"To bypass the wilderness is to bypass God." JB

In those plodding years I met and grew to know God, one imperfect step at a time.

The thing is, He knew me inside and out and yet He wanted to be with me.

To be continued: