After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other hand, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection. – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
My perfectionism never helps me to be “perfect.” It instead tracks all my failures, tacks them to the wall, and stands there, reading the list and laughing. It tells me I will never be good enough. It says I deserve nothing, not talent, not friends, not anything. I should just give up. Crawl into bed and never emerge.
If I listen to my perfectionism, I drown in despair. I begin to think that everything depends on me. I forget that my rescue comes not because of anything I’ve done but because of who God is. He rescues me because of His great and glorious name. When I fail, I need to run to Him instead of hiding in the garden, trying to bury my guilt and shame.
My perfectionism does have a point; it cures the illusion that I can do anything in my own power. I can’t. I may sometimes think I can and may even have the desire to change, but I constantly do the opposite of what I desire. A war wages within me. Every time I think I’ve got things covered, I’m proven wrong. My ability to change and try again is not found in my own strength and willpower. It’s found in resting in God’s grace and in asking Him to empower me, to show Himself bright and glorious in and through me.
That’s when transformation begins – when I stop thinking I can do everything on my own. It’s when I cry out to God and say, “I’m at the end of my rope, God! Help me!” that He comes. He was always there; I just needed to stop thinking I could rescue myself. Only He can do that. His great and marvelous grace and power at work within me brings about change and the desire to try again, not self-sufficiency.
Image: Mateus Lunardi Dutra (Creative Commons)