Broken Red Pens
on the God who applauds imperfection
Welcome back to the Back of the Flock, where we are struggling to keep up because car seats are heavy, laundry is endless, and Daylight Saving Time is a living nightmare.
I’ve had to drag my kids out of bed the last few days, and yesterday, my son asked why I was making dinner “in the middle of the afternoon” (note, dear reader, that it was 5:57 p.m. Light changes are never not weird).
Today, we’re talking about the beauty of imperfection, which is obviously something this textbook Enneagram One is still learning. Read about what my daughter taught me at a playground and how God applauds even our worst attempts; then keep scrolling for some links and laughs.
And please, please don’t leave without telling the rest of us how you have been personally victimized by Daylight Saving Time (we are legion).
I sit on a park bench in the sun, watching my kids race around the playground. They have discovered, through blissful childhood unawareness of the egregious cost of medical care, that they can climb to the top of some roped webbing and jump the six feet to the spongy playground base below them. They take turns, leaping and yelling,
COWABUNGA!
GERONIMO!
and
UP! UP! AND AWAAAAAAAY!
as they jump from the towering heights and I pray against an emergency room visit. After several rounds, my daughter climbs to the top and leaps with outstretched arms, shouting,
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAAAAAAAY!
as she falls to the ground with a thump that likely would have shattered each and every one of my aging bones. She immediately dusts herself off and runs towards the other end of the playground, leaving in her wake an insight that has stayed with me since.
While my daughter and I share many similarities, from our hazel eyes to our downright delight in funny animal videos, we are different in some pretty core ways. Whereas I am driven by a ceaseless drumbeat of productivity, Elsa’s life is built upon pillars of coziness and calm. If you are looking for her, you should start at the couch, where she is most often self-swaddled in a blanket reading through a stack of books. While I was the kid rubbing holes in my homework with my eraser in a misguided attempt to have everything perfect, Elsa’s mantra with school is simply get it DONE, penmanship be damned.
In other words, we simultaneously love and drive one another crazy with our similarities and differences in the lengthy tradition of mothers and daughters from generations past.
Last week, she helped me make cookies for an event we were hosting. As I dutifully scraped the sides of the bowl and meticulously leveled off the flour, Elsa gently chided me, “Remember, mom, it doesn’t have to be perfect.” I agreed with her, externally thanking her for the reminder, while curiously poking at the feeling that had welled up in me after her admonition:
But it actually DOES need to be perfect.
It will surprise literally no one that I’ve been chasing gold stars since birth. I knew I tended towards perfectionism long before my first therapy session several years ago, but what I didn’t realize is how much damage it was doing me, how perfectionism is basically a form of self-abuse.
The most ironic part of my life right now is that I’m editing another author’s book on perfectionism right now. He’s a therapist, and it has taken all my professional willpower not to highlight something in every single paragraph and comment “it me.” As his chapters have outlined helpful strategies that will help perfectionists combat all-or-nothing thinking, perfectionistic procrastination, and more, I’ve wielded my digital red pen and combed his words for sentence structure mistakes, misplaced modifiers, and erroneous commas.
Perfectionism is a blessing sometimes. (We are excellent, if not exhausting, quality control workers).
Working my way through paragraphs and pronouns with a red pen is one thing, but I tend to carry that red pen into my actual life. It starts with wondering if I should have had more protein for breakfast and if most other women my age actually make the bed everyday. The red pen spills ink over how much we didn’t get done while homeschooling and accuses me of walking instead of doing cardio for exercise. The red pen doubts that I will ever publish a book. The red pen scratches out are you sure you’re not writing something heretical here? The red pen triple underlines my decision to run errands instead of play a game with my youngest even when I tell it that it was the last day to return the Zappos sneakers that didn’t fit my oldest. The red pen cringes when I think I’ve cleaned my house enough; it's not so sure. I hear the red pen, scratching away, on the evenings we opt for frozen pizza over homemade anything.
Most nights, it takes me a while to pry the red pen out of my clenched fist where it can rest on my bedside table overnight, only occasionally visiting me in dreams in which I have yet again left my highschool basketball uniform at home for an away game or never actually delivered that coffee to the guy at table six in 2003.
What I’m realizing is that I tend to edit my own life, before and during and after every decision, in real time, with a red pen containing an endless amount of ink. If left to decide, the red pen would have stranded me at the top of the playground, unable to land on the perfect word to yell as I flew through the air. I’d probably still be there today, which is what makes my daughter’s decision to leap anyway so incredible.
She leapt, yelling, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAAAAAAAY! with every ounce of joy accounted for and present, undaunted and undeterred by her lack of a catchphrase.
I’m wondering these days, what it would be like to jump anyway. To do the work, yes, to pour out diligence and effort, yes. But to press publish without fear of the red pen. To parent without fear of the red pen. To truly live without fear of the red pen.
I’m thinking about when my kids were little and learning to wash their hands. There were seasons of puddles all over the floor, twenty pumps of soap, soap bottles knocked again and again into the sink…and yet? I still would applaud their efforts, doling out good jobs like it was my job. When they would bring me their masterpiece drawings of egg-shaped-cyclops humans with between 2-4 stick limbs, I would audibly marvel at their artistry, immediately hanging their handiwork on the fridge.
When we say that we believe that we have been adopted by God, that we are God’s children, we have to believe that God marvels at our work, no matter how flawed it may be.
We have to believe that God’s love for us remains steady when the cookies come out flat and when the house is a disaster and when we lose our tempers in the scramble to get everyone to soccer practice on time. Whether our best efforts appear feeble or fantastic, when we believe that Jesus’ work to rescue us and redeem all things on the cross was actually perfect, we can acknowledge that the red pen has lost its power, snapped in two along with torn temple veil at his declaration: it is finished.
At nights, when my hand is white-knuckled clinging to the red pen with ferocity, I imagine God, cradling me, telling me, “I know you did your best.” I imagine God loving me with a parent’s love, steady and unchanging, despite all the water sloshed on the floor. I imagine a God who whispers, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” at the end of each marathon day of motherhood that begins with Cheerios and ends with good-night kisses. I imagine a God who laughs and applauds when I do the work, even when I don’t always know exactly what to do or say, a God who is filled with joy when I jump anyway.
Tell me in what areas you feel invited to break your own red pen in two.
What I’ve Loved Lately:
READ - My therapist recently recommended The Anatomy of Anxiety to me, and it’s the book I wish had been out when I first began to discover that I had anxiety. If you’re wondering how you can team up with your body to fight anxiety, this is the book for you.
WATCH - I fully acknowledge that this might not be for everyone, but the dry, British humor of Cunk on Earth is everything I’ve ever wanted. Deadpan host “Philomena Cunk” walks through the history of humanity with serious irreverence and countless inaccuracies. I love everything about it. Please, please tell me if you watch it.
(teeny tiny language disclaimer for Cunk on Earth; it’s not constant, but if that’s not your jam, be warned)
LISTEN - We saw Haley Heyndericksx open for Gregory Alan Isakov a few years ago, and lately I’ve been listening to a lot of her again lately. Her voice is lilting and folky and also powerful. Her lyrics are top notch. Check out her album I Need to Start a Garden (my favorites are Drinking Song and Untitled God Song).
EAT - Our oven broke, but as soon as its replacement comes, I’m making these Southern Buttermilk Biscuits again (from my friend Steph at Girl Versus Dough). These are seriously easy, toweringly fluffy, and the perfect vehicle for your bff and mine - butter.
(disclaimer: I have been the recipient of Steph’s expert baking for years at our dinner club, and I am totally, 100% biased in recommending her recent cookbook to you. It’s a gem!)
PLAY - This post about (adult) Easter games that Patron Saint of Kid Activities - Susie of Busy Toddler - wrote is everything I’ve ever wanted to be as a mother. Cutthroat competition for adults at Easter? Sign me up.
Did You Miss It?
Over on Instagram…
….I wrote this poem to the mother who gave birth under the rubble in Syria.
…I made a big change and talked about my kids’ horrified responses.
…I detailed the series of unfortunate events that was our February.
Some Laughs to Send you On Your Way:
You are a gem and I really enjoy your writing. It touches me in such a weird season I’m in. I always feel like I know you after reading your work. Such a sweet reminder that we all need about how God sees us and cares for us, lovingly.
UGHHH I LOVE EVERY SINGLE WORD OF THIS - beautifully written, painfully true, yet stunningly hopeful by the end. Thank you.