Perfection
There’s a framed photograph hanging on my wall, by my porch door. It is an early October morning on my grandparents’ farm. The pale blue sky is checkered with clouds, and an old tree stands out black against the sunrise in the left side of the frame, its limbs and leaves delicate and fine as feathers. Behind it and filling the rest of the frame is a golden explosion of sunrise, breaking through and around and over a tree in the distance at the top of the hill.
That hill was an annoyance to me after Daylight Savings, as the sun was just sliding over the hill every morning when I left for work, blinding me and hiding any oncoming cars on my ascent. But I remember the day I took this picture, as the fog spread out and mixed with the sunrise, lighting up the land I knew like my own body, turning it into a celestial glory. I stopped the car in the middle of the road and snapped the picture through a dirty window on an old iPhone. It was a terrible shot. You could still see the hood of my car.
Yet nothing could block the sunrise majesty.
Perfectionism is a real issue for me. I want everything not just to be done well, but to be done “right.” My husband is mystified by this. “Good enough is enough,” he tells me. “Stop kicking yourself over perfect.” Intellectually, I know this is true. But intellectually is also not good enough.
I guess in some ways, this photograph is a reminder of the limits I let perfectionism place on me. I was disappointed when I checked the picture on my screen and realized I hadn’t paid any attention to the hood of my car or the dead bugs on the windshield. I should have gotten out of my car, or should have stuck my head out of the sunroof, or should have done something else I couldn’t think of, so the picture would have done justice to the scene.
But when I see the photograph, I don’t think about those mistakes, which a little cropping erased anyway. I am grateful I got to experience that moment, the same view I’ve seen all my life totally transformed. It definitely had nothing to do with my skill as a photographer, and yet this picture gives me pleasure every time I look at it.
When I struggle with perfectionism, maybe I can look at this picture and remember that nothing can block God’s glory. Not even me.
