This morning I stayed home to look after a family member who is not feeling the best. So I started doing what I normally do when I have the opportunity - catching up on reading other people's blogs.
I found one that tells a tender story, a "God-moment" between mother and son, on "Faith Imagined" ... it's called "Receiving Mercy." I highly recommend it because it speaks volumes about the kind of life-lessons we often miss growing up. Happily, the author of the blog seized an opportunity to not only teach that lesson but re-learn it herself.
The hidden message many (if not most) of us get growing up is that this or that thing that we have done (and into which we have put our heart and soul) isn't "good enough."
When my oldest child was 3, she showed remarkable talent in drawing. Her drawings looked like those of a 4-year-old. Yet whenever she drew something she would say she hated it. "Why?" I would ask her. "It's very good!"
"No it's not!" she would wail. "I can't get it to look like it is inside me!" She had a picture in her mind which, when she tried to put it on paper, didn't turn out like she envisioned. She didn't have the skills to make it look that way. Then she'd say the inevitable. "I'm never going to draw anything ever again!"
And I would sit beside her and tell her, "You're learning. Everyone needs practice to do something well. Your drawings are very good for the age that you are. I bet if you just keep it up, they will get better. You'll see."
Shy eyes would look up at me and a glimmer of hope would be rekindled. "You really think so?" she would say, almost in a whisper.
That same theme would be repeated as she got better and her concept of perfection grew as she did. "Agghhh!" I heard her yell from her room one day. When I asked her what was the matter, she said, "I can never get the HANDS right!" (This was about 8 or 9 years later...)
"Keep at it honey. Use your own hand as a model if you like...just to get more practice. You'll get it!" And she did.
Since I had been told so many times in my youth that what I did wasn't good enough, because it wasn't the way my mom did it, I tried not to pass that on to my kids. I remember all too well being criticized and compared to the "doer" my mom was when she was a child ("When I was six years old I stood on the chair and did the dishes so my mother wouldn't have to do them.") Ugh. I rolled my eyes internally when she started down that road. She was a Martha, I was more of a Mary (doing versus being). After so much criticism, I got tired of faking it, and just gave up trying to please her. So I hid in the bathroom when it came time to do the dishes or some other chore she'd only tell me I was doing wrong because it wasn't like she would do it. The bathroom was the only place I could go where she wouldn't tell me I was doing something wrong, I guess.
But even with that, I ended up trying to make my kids into perfect little carbon copies of myself when it came to matters of faith, taste in TV programs and music, and other things I considered dangerous - and the more I tried, the less like me they became! (That's a whole other blog post, one I'll save for another time).
Back to my story.
She persevered - is completely self-taught. Today she is somewhat of a celebrity in her circle of friends. Even her "doodles" are sought-after. I have several of them on my wall at work; people sometimes ask me about them. I am so very grateful that God allowed me to play just a very small role in encouraging her to develop her natural talent.
How is this story about "faking it?"
I can't count the number of dreams in my life and the lives of those I love - dreams that have been stifled and/or subjugated because of perfectionism and a refusal to practice self-care, from a fear of really living instead of just being alive. These core beliefs about our own worth come primarily from things we hear from others about the value of what we do, and the value of who we are (including the lack of any kind of message, which will tend to lead toward the belief, "I'm a nothing. I'm a nobody. Nobody even cares.") They tell us that our dreams, our longings, don't matter. They tell us that we may as well just settle for what our parents had. They tell us that we couldn't possibly aspire to be more, to do more.
They are lies.
They kill creativity, suffocate the soul, and crush the spirit. They rob our identity from us.
They are so very hard to counter. But it is possible. We do it by telling ourselves the truth - over and over and over again. We ARE worth it. We DO matter. We CAN make a valuable contribution. We are NOT what we do. We are more than what we have become while trying to survive life. We CAN start to really live. We DON'T have to be perfect. We are ALLOWED to make mistakes - and learn from them. We DO have the right to occupy space in this world. We do not NEED to fix other people's problems for them. We CAN have a life of our own, feelings of our own, dreams of our own. We DON'T need to fake it anymore.
I found one that tells a tender story, a "God-moment" between mother and son, on "Faith Imagined" ... it's called "Receiving Mercy." I highly recommend it because it speaks volumes about the kind of life-lessons we often miss growing up. Happily, the author of the blog seized an opportunity to not only teach that lesson but re-learn it herself.
The hidden message many (if not most) of us get growing up is that this or that thing that we have done (and into which we have put our heart and soul) isn't "good enough."
"No it's not!" she would wail. "I can't get it to look like it is inside me!" She had a picture in her mind which, when she tried to put it on paper, didn't turn out like she envisioned. She didn't have the skills to make it look that way. Then she'd say the inevitable. "I'm never going to draw anything ever again!"
And I would sit beside her and tell her, "You're learning. Everyone needs practice to do something well. Your drawings are very good for the age that you are. I bet if you just keep it up, they will get better. You'll see."
Shy eyes would look up at me and a glimmer of hope would be rekindled. "You really think so?" she would say, almost in a whisper.
That same theme would be repeated as she got better and her concept of perfection grew as she did. "Agghhh!" I heard her yell from her room one day. When I asked her what was the matter, she said, "I can never get the HANDS right!" (This was about 8 or 9 years later...)
"Keep at it honey. Use your own hand as a model if you like...just to get more practice. You'll get it!" And she did.
Since I had been told so many times in my youth that what I did wasn't good enough, because it wasn't the way my mom did it, I tried not to pass that on to my kids. I remember all too well being criticized and compared to the "doer" my mom was when she was a child ("When I was six years old I stood on the chair and did the dishes so my mother wouldn't have to do them.") Ugh. I rolled my eyes internally when she started down that road. She was a Martha, I was more of a Mary (doing versus being). After so much criticism, I got tired of faking it, and just gave up trying to please her. So I hid in the bathroom when it came time to do the dishes or some other chore she'd only tell me I was doing wrong because it wasn't like she would do it. The bathroom was the only place I could go where she wouldn't tell me I was doing something wrong, I guess.
But even with that, I ended up trying to make my kids into perfect little carbon copies of myself when it came to matters of faith, taste in TV programs and music, and other things I considered dangerous - and the more I tried, the less like me they became! (That's a whole other blog post, one I'll save for another time).
 |
| She calls this one "Family Man." |
She persevered - is completely self-taught. Today she is somewhat of a celebrity in her circle of friends. Even her "doodles" are sought-after. I have several of them on my wall at work; people sometimes ask me about them. I am so very grateful that God allowed me to play just a very small role in encouraging her to develop her natural talent.
How is this story about "faking it?"
I can't count the number of dreams in my life and the lives of those I love - dreams that have been stifled and/or subjugated because of perfectionism and a refusal to practice self-care, from a fear of really living instead of just being alive. These core beliefs about our own worth come primarily from things we hear from others about the value of what we do, and the value of who we are (including the lack of any kind of message, which will tend to lead toward the belief, "I'm a nothing. I'm a nobody. Nobody even cares.") They tell us that our dreams, our longings, don't matter. They tell us that we may as well just settle for what our parents had. They tell us that we couldn't possibly aspire to be more, to do more.
They are lies.
They kill creativity, suffocate the soul, and crush the spirit. They rob our identity from us.
They are so very hard to counter. But it is possible. We do it by telling ourselves the truth - over and over and over again. We ARE worth it. We DO matter. We CAN make a valuable contribution. We are NOT what we do. We are more than what we have become while trying to survive life. We CAN start to really live. We DON'T have to be perfect. We are ALLOWED to make mistakes - and learn from them. We DO have the right to occupy space in this world. We do not NEED to fix other people's problems for them. We CAN have a life of our own, feelings of our own, dreams of our own. We DON'T need to fake it anymore.
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