Setting Aside the Need for Perfection

Last week my daughter and I visited an apple orchard with a some friends. It was a beautiful day, we picked a bushel of apples, picnicked, chatted, and had a great time. Before we left I picked up some apple cider and fresh donuts to take home to Jonathan. When I got home my daughter was asleep in the back of the van. I didn't want to wake her, so I asked Jonathan to come out and sit in the car with me. There in the driveway we enjoyed some cider and donuts together. 

The cider was perfect - fresh, Michigan, unpasteurized, delicious. If you have never had cider straight from an orchard, you do not know what cider is. The donuts had been taken out of the oven just an hour earlier and complimented the cider perfectly. We sat there in the car with the cool air, the sunshine, and the colorful fall leaves all around us. It was a beautiful moment.  

It wasn't picture perfect... we were in the car. The diaper bag was in between us, open with things spilling out of it. Our lunch items and picnic blanket from the outing were laying around, and we shared my travel cup to drink the cider out of. It was a lovely moment together, but it certainly didn't look "Pinterest-worthy."

I tend to love my little moments to feel perfect. Drinking coffee and eating a special, home-baked something with my husband while the sun shines through the window across the clear table, a clean kitchen in the background. Taking our daughter for a walk or a picnic, leaving technology behind, and enjoying time together as a family. Those evening ice cream treats after baby bedtime, complete with an episode of our current favorite show. Of course, a delicious treat isn't really perfect unless it is being enjoyed in a clean room, with someone to share it with.

I have always been somewhat of a perfectionist. "Good enough" is not a concept that makes a lot of sense to me. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. If something is going to be enjoyed, it should be enjoyed perfectly, fully, and in the correct environment. If I am going to clean, I want to clean everything and have the whole house shine. If I am an employee, I want to do the best work possible and satisfy my coworkers and employer in every single way I can. As a wife, I don't just want to be a good wife - I want to literally be the best wife that could possibly be imagined. And as a mother, well, I want to have no regrets. 

Perfectionism is good in the sense that it motivates us to do our best, but perfectionism always leads to frustration because ultimately we will be confronted with the fact that we are not perfect. Before I became a parent I felt it was possible to do a decent job at many of these things. There were compromises, but not as many. I really felt like I could be a pretty good wife, keep the house fairly clean, and do a great job at work most of the time. But parenthood has a way of changing everything. 

Parenting has taught me that life is about balance, tension, give and take, and compromise. I cannot be good at everything, and I cannot do everything. I have to prioritize. I have to decide if I want to be a wife and mother who stays home and spends her time with her children or if I want to be a great employee and work a high-pressure job. I have to decide if I want to cook dinner from scratch or if I want to take that time to vacuum. I have to choose if I want to spend my baby's nap time writing a blog post or working and making money. Do I want to sit and read and play with my daughter or do I want to bake something for my husband? 

Sometimes I make one choice, and sometimes I make another. I balance as best I can, and it works out just fine. The hard part isn't necessarily making the choices, it's living with them and being content. It's accepting the fact that my kitchen floor is dirty because I haven't prioritized moping and not letting that ruin my mood. It's giving up some things and working fewer hours so that I can spend that time with my daughter, and then not worrying about money or second-guessing myself. Living with and being content with my choices is a process, and is something I am always working on. Realizing and accepting that I do have to make compromises also helps me to respect and understand people who make other decisions and have other priorities than I do. After all, I make the best choices I can for my family, but then I always find myself wondering if that was really the right thing to do. Part of that might be the perfectionism in me, but I know that we all struggle with this contentment at times.

The truth behind my cider and donuts in the car moment is that I knew if I went inside I would find my dirty kitchen - just the way I had left it. It can be challenging for me - a recovering perfectionist - to just block out that knowledge and allow myself to enjoy what I do have and what I have achieved, but it is well worth it.