Meaningful and Perfect

I feel the need to be perfect and deep.  All the time.  I don't know where or when I decided this was even possible but those are the standards that I hold high above my head and then spend the rest of my time leaping and jumping and falling and tripping to achieve. 

Or, I eye my standards and, acknowledging that they are out of my reach, I just sit down and pass on that particular task...it's not worth doing if I don't know that I can do it The Best.

I like having high standards, I think that's biblical...but unrealistically high?  I can never be perfect and not everything I say can be earth-shatteringly deep--even if I'd love for that to be true. 

More often than not, I wear myself out pursuing perfection in all the things I feel are put on my shoulders by others and by life's circumstances and I let the things I love and have a passion for slip past me because I fear failure in those things the most.  I end up burned out and feeling empty and useless

One thing I love about the city is that everything is very real here.  There aren't many facades that survive.  I can learn a lot from that.  I can easily get in the way of the truth:  Jesus is my only meaning and perfection. 

I recently resurrected an old writing of mine from college where I wrote:

One night when I was walking skid row with a friend, handing out food and talking to people, I met Alex--who had just been released from prison that morning for drug and gang related activities.  He gave me the best compliment I think I'll ever receive and added some perspective to my life aspirations.  He said he didn't understand it but when I talked about Jesus Christ my face lit up, my eyes were bright, I was smiling from ear to ear, and it was beautiful.  I have never felt more excited, more fulfilled, or more sure in my life, than right then when I knew I was accomplishing God's plan for my life--to live so transparently that everyone could see the reason I lived at all.

Apparently, this is a lesson I must keep re-learning.  Most of the time I subconsciously feel that I can best represent God when I am "together,"  but too often that leaves people seeing ME and my desperate attempts to be meaningful and perfect.  Instead I just want them to see Jesus...which, heaven help me, will require me to put a little more failure on the line and relinquish the idea that I could ever be The Best...that title has already been won, and it wasn't by me.