Skip to main content

No, It Doesn't Have to Be Perfect

 


I actually intended to write this post, when the previous post tumbled out onto the page instead. This incident happened just the other night. I was with one of my 7 year olds and she wanted to play Chutes and Ladders. When we took the game down, it required the set up of a new game. I arranged the parts and tasked her with assembling the game while I went to the restroom. Upon my return she had successfully set up the spinner and 4 playing pieces. However, that is not where my eyes or mind gravitated. Instead I saw the pieces still attached to the plastic making it look like the game set up was incomplete. Thankfully the Holy Spirit showed me myself before the words of criticism could fully leave my lips. I praised her for the excellent set up, and realized that what looked incomplete was actually irrelevant to the game. She loved playing the game and demanded to play again the next night. 

The lesson is that I can easily damage others with a perfectionistic mentality. Still today I hear the "what happened to the other 3 points" when presenting a grade that was less than 100 during my childhood. That "why is it not perfect" mentality threatens to plague those I pour into, unless I say the curse stops with me!


A few weeks ago I was working with one of my 10 year olds during quarantine. He was working on some multi-digit multiplication problems. For my non teachers and non math brains, problems like 526 x 324. His multiplication was excellent but something was off with his attention to precision. The teacher in me came out and I gave him some tricks of the trade to improve his addition accuracy. On that first day he really tried, but still struggled to get correct answers. I had to tap into the mom I want to be, and allow him to "finish" with incorrect answers. The next morning he wanted to work on it again, and was able to correct all but 1 problem. Again tapping into the mom I want to be, I was happy with his desire to want to correct. I am learning for myself, and therefore for others; no, it doesn't have to be perfect. By the end of the week he was able to do the multiplication correctly and sought to get them right for himself, not for me. Interestingly enough, in a house of 9 kids his work happened to be the best, despite my stance of perfection not required.

Hopefully I can continue to internalize that for myself so I can continue to pass it on to others.  #BigLessonsFromLittles












 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Still Married, Over 2 Years Later!

  It sounds like what’s the big whoop? I’m sure most would hope that would be true 2, 10, 20 years! But we separated over 2 years ago! I filed for divorce over a year ago. Yet, here we are, still! “Final” hearing over 4 months ago.   Marriage is definitely meant to be binding, and I am not a believer of I just married the wrong person. But what about when the person doesn’t want to be married to you? What about when the person engages in abusive behaviors towards you?  Less than 5 months into my marriage I had to face dilemmas no newlywed should. It was my life that spun into a nightmare. It was my life that had looked so promising and then became so ugly. I had to wrestle with thoughts of immediate divorce vs trying to work it out/ believe God/ anything but divorce. I chose the God will fix it path. And I believed He would.  Then as time went on I changed to the God can fix it camp. But as months passed, and conversations looped, and counseling continued to be refus...
Post a Comment
Tell Me More»

Happily Ever After?

 I was speaking with a friend the other night, and she commented that she didn’t remember the last time I was so happy. The reason she couldn’t remember was because any sort of happiness I had experienced previously had been so fleeting. She and I had met at the end of 2020. My whole life had gone through restructuring, so 2021 seemed promising.  Purposeful but painful is what 2021 turned out to be. Rather than height to height, 2021 traversed heights to valleys. What was hopeful collapsed. What was stable shifted to shaky. And what was foreign and unknown became my safety zone. I went from the familiar streets of DC to the mountains of North Carolina. I went from being one of many almost everywhere I went, to one of the only African Americans in the area. It was hard. Injustice was real, and the marriage I had been hoping for had imploded. 2022 brought new everything. New job. New place to live. New title: single mom. Constant change in which I found it hard to find more than...
Post a Comment
Tell Me More»