The Hidden Messages of “Being Perfect!”

This dictator of being perfect causes you to look at what you are not good at or at something you can’t change. This leads you to try to compensate for these shortcomings by becoming an overachiever or striving for perfection. Many times, this is rooted in the need for being loved and accepted for who you are.

I was told I had a big nose and buck teeth. This caused me to be self-conscious, so I wouldn’t smile and thought I was not pretty. It didn’t help that my sister was beautiful. My mother said I was cute, and my sister was beautiful. I didn’t look in the mirror because I didn’t like what I saw. Now when I look back at the time in my life, I realize that I was pretty. I just couldn’t see it because people in authority placed me in a box that trapped me into their tainted view of me. I know mom didn’t mean it in the way it was spoken. I was skinny and my sister was a little heavier, which was one reason why mom said those things.

My sister, Ella, was very smart. She never had to open a book to study and would get straight “A’s.” I would study for hours and get “C’s.” But I also could not say my name. I would say Roof not Ruth. I went to speech class for six years to learn how to pronoun word with “sh, th, ch, r” in them. This affected my ability to spell and read.

These self-focused problems led me down a path of trying to be perfect. All my clothes had to be matching. Every hair had to be in place. I would work twice as hard as everyone else to keep up with others. I would go the extra mile to help people, which left no time for me to live and enjoy life. It became a vicious circle of never doing enough. My identity was “the good girl you could rely on.”

Unravelling the Traps of Perfectionism.

I read this book “Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life” by Hannah Whitall Smith. She was a Quaker that walked through many tragedies back 150 years ago. She talked about God our Father’s who loves us. The first time I read this book, I threw it across the room in anger. I said, “I never had this kind of father.” God had me read that book seven time to get the love of God in me. Each time, it would melt away a layer of perfectionism. By the end of the book, I had a new identity which was “I am God’s kid, and He loves me.”

The Holy Spirit worked in those seven years by instructing me to do different things to change my mindset. I would leave my bed unmade, which was hard because in the military you were trained to make your bed every day. When I looked in the mirror, I would say to myself “let’s see how bad I look.” Holy Spirit said to say, “let’s see how good I look.”

I started to learn how to look at what I was good at instead of what I couldn’t do. I had a mindset to understand computers and how to organize files in computers. When I worked for an attorney, I got over one hundred red marks on my first project. I was ready to quit and work at Walmart. But instead of quitting, I took the sixteen-page sales agreement and computerized it. I put a letter on each paragraph and had the attorney say which paragraph he wanted in the agreement. This kept me from having to type out the dictation and it eliminated my mistakes. By the end of five years, I had all the attorney’s forms computerized. My spelling and grammar got better but I bypassed my problems by using my skills.

Refocusing on Your Gifts.

I decided, after I received the love of God, to learn to accept myself. I learned to refocus on my abilities instead of trying to improve things I would never be good at. It was a process of allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal the wrong mindsets. Then taking steps to replace these lies with what God says about me. I had to learn to say “no” to people and what they expected. I had to learn to say “no” to that voice of perfection that would try and make me feel guilty for not helping someone.

It was a major lesson when I was complaining to God about not getting a promotion in the Department of Environmental Protection for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I said to God, I have done all this work and have helped others, but they got the promotions. God said to me “Quit plowing in another man’s field and expect the harvest!” That caught my attention. I realized that I was doing other people’s work, and they were getting the credit. The identity of “the good girl” had trapped me into going the extra mile. Doing other people’s work was not right. The law of sowing and reaping caused my hard work to create a blessing for them and left my fields untended. It is one thing to help someone, and it is another thing to do their job for them. I had my boundaries mixed up because of my “good girl” identity. This was a hard lesson for me to swallow. But once I learned this lesson, I got a promotion and quit taking on the heavy load of false responsibilities

We need to break off words spoken over us and ask God how He sees us. Ask Holy Spirit to reveal your gifts and identity. Repent for allowing perfectionism to rule you and your decisions. Ask for Holy Spirit to remove any trauma from the result of these mindsets. You are God’s kid, and He knew who your parents would be. He knew the paths you would walk and the events that would happen in your life. The key is turning to God and learning how to walk out the path He has for you. When Jesus said, “my yolk is easy, and my burden is light.” I am sure many of us thought I would hate to see a heavy load if this is easy. When we walk in the light of God’s truths instead of our own boxes of perfectionism, the load is easy.

Prayer

Father God,

Help! I want to get off this treadmill of perfection. It is only through Jesus’s sacrifice that I am accepted. I don’t have to earn acceptance or win people’s approval by my being perfect. I forgive those who spoke words over me that caused a negative impact on my view of myself and my life. I ask that You forgive me for believing the lies that I must work to be perfect. Change my mindset and enlighten me to see who You created me to be. I am willing to change. Holy Spirit help me to walk out this new view of God’s love for me. Jesus, show me how to be who God created me to be like You did with the apostles who were a group of unperfect men

Scriptures

Galatians 6:7, Matthew 11:30, and John 17:23