Perfectly Imperfect

I'll never forget when my children were born. When the doctor finally let me hold them for the first time, I remember thanking God that they were healthy, and thinking to myself  that they were perfect. Their little fingers, eyes, and toes completely took my breath away. I was in love. It wasn't until a few months after they were born (and many rude and hurtful comments later), that I noticed their misshaped and larger than normal heads. To me they were flawless little people.

As a mom, it's easy to overlook the flaws our kids have because our hearts are so abundant with love. Though we know deep down inside that nobody is perfect, we sure do think our babies are, right? Or was that just me? Every comment about the size of my child's head (and believe me, there were a lot of them) I took as a direct and personal insult. I felt like I had done something wrong.  Note: I still do-- so for the love of God- please keep your mouth shut when it comes to my children and their heads.  I still get this way 10 years later. Logan started fourth grade this year. I know, I know, "fourth grade is the transition year". Chad and I (okay, mostly me) have always emphasized getting good grades as being really  important. At times, I have demanded it. Mix that in with a child who doesn't want to disappoint his parents, a new "common core" way of teaching, and what do you get? A nail biting little perfectionist who hates to fail at anything, and has a hard time when he does. He wants to perform and thinks he has to in order to be accepted.
No, fourth grade isn't my favorite, but it has taught me some things: Number 1- I still, and always will, hate math, and Number 2- that there are two competing pressures in the world- the pressure to conform and the pressure to compare. I know as a woman, we compare ourselves to other women over an over and try to conform to someone else's standards as to what beauty really is.  Beauty is unique. It comes from within. As  parents we want our children to stand out, we want them to be the next sports star, famous singer, model, or whatever. I'm sure I'm not the only parent guilty of it.  There are times, we compare our children to other kids whether we realize it or not. I need to work on accepting my own uniqueness so that my kids can accept theirs. It's okay not to be perfect and it's okay for my children to see how flawed and imperfect their mom really is. I can't control my kids (though I am guilty of trying to on occasion). I can, however, stop insisting that they act or perform a certain way (in school or not). God made us in His image, and sometimes as parents we want to make our kids in our image. When we tell our kids, "You should love swimming because your dad does.", or "You should be better at math because we were" sends this message loud and clear to our children: "You can't be yourself. The only way to get love and acceptance or approval is to be like mom or dad." I still struggle with this after 40 years.  My goal in life is not to mold my children into what I think they should be, but to help them discover who God made them to be. So in all actuality, I should count fourth grade as one of my many blessings (except math--story problems are NOT a blessing in my book). My kids are perfectly imperfect, and that's a beautiful wonderful thing. Posted by thoughts from a wandering mind at 12:40 PM 3 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest