You would think today would be the ideal day to get some stuff done around the office.  My secretary is out.  I am currently the only one in the building.  The phone hasn’t rung in five hours.  I have only received one email message since sometime last night.    The only noise, other than the click of my computer keys is the occasional text message notification coming through on my cell phone.  It is a bright, sunny spring day; but like many bright, sunny spring days in Deming, New Mexico it is too windy to even want to go outside.  Yes, it is the perfect day to get some work done.  So, what am I doing?  I am sitting at my desk, mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, and playing inane games on my phone.  So much for work.

I don’t know why I do this.  I am a master at procrastinating, especially when it comes to writing a sermon.  It’s a perfect day for writing, but I might get to it Thursday afternoon.  Or it might be Saturday.  And when that day comes I will alternate between very productive spurts of writing and equally unproductive spurts of beating myself up for starting so late.  I keep telling myself I will change those habits; but I am ten years into this gig as pastor and I don’t really see my habits changing.

I guess where this is leading is that I need to take a dose of my own medicine.  I don’t have a plethora of people coming to my office for counseling.  Yet of those few who do, many of them just need assurances that whatever actual or perceived failures they have been a part of don’t make them failures as people.  My advice to them is often, “Give yourself some grace.”  You see, we all fail at times.  That is one reason why the process of moving forward through life is called growth.  Very, very rarely – if ever – is someone good at something the first time (or even the hundred first time) we try it.  It is a process of trial and error…a process of failing and trying something differently again and again and again before we are even merely proficient at anything.  We all need to give ourselves grace.  We need to remember that failure is only truly failure when we don’t get up and try again.

I am the world’s worst at taking my own advice for myself.  I remember my mother telling me several times when I was a little girl that I had perfectionist tendencies.  The way she said it was clearly not a compliment.  I know she was just trying to get me to lighten up on myself; and I would.  For a very brief period of time.  Then it was right back to beating myself up when something wasn’t right.  I am still fighting that internal battle 40 some years later.  The only thing is, I have also found over the years that the more I try to get something perfect, the more frustrated I get.  The more frustrated I get the worse whatever I was doing becomes.  It is a vicious cycle, and one I know I need to break.

I know I am not alone in the struggle.  I know many people who fight this battle alongside of me, whether they call it perfectionist tendencies or being in control or something else.  The problem with this is that the only one who is perfect, the only one who is in control, and the only one who ever will be is God.  Yes, we were created in God’s image, but we can never be God.  The only thing we can do is try, try again.  We can try to be better today than we were yesterday, and to be better tomorrow than we were today.  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, called this “moving on to perfection.”  We may never get there.  We can always try.  And when we try and fail, there is always grace.  Grace from ourselves and grace from our God.  My lovely friends, give yourselves some grace today!  We all need it.

And with that, Folks, this pastor has nothing else to say…Now, back to not working 🙂

Blessings on this day,

Pastor Koreen