A Moment of Perfection

You know those perfect people? or those perfect moms? or those perfect families? or those perfect kids? Yeah, we all know them. We see them everywhere. They are sitting at church with their perfect hair. They are shopping at the grocery store with their perfectly mannered children. They are wearing the perfectly matching, perfectly adorable Halloween costumes.

Guess what. They aren't really perfect. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, I know they aren't REALLY perfect and they have some minor flaws, but they are still perfect at (fill in the blank) and I'm not.

Guess what. You're wrong. They are not only not perfect in everything, they aren't actually perfect in anything. Perfection is an illusion. Perfection in any form only exists in seconds.

For example...
Last week my perfect family showed up at a church party looking perfectly adorable in perfectly matching Halloween costumes.  We were that family.

So here's the truth:
Agreeing on costumes made at least one of my children cry. I had to resew two of the costumes because I sewed them up-side-down or in-side-out.  We spent three solid hours finishing and fixing costumes before the party. I spent most of those three hours yelling at my kids and in general being pretty darn grumpy. At least two of my kids cried putting on their costumes because they didn't fit right and I had no patience left for complainers. We were twenty minutes late to the party because our costumes still weren't finished. When we finally got to the party, most of my kids (and my husband) were no longer speaking to me.  I cut the arm holes wrong on my husband's costume so he couldn't eat. By the time we got home, four of my five kids refused to put their costumes back on. Only one out of five actually wore their costume trick-or-treating (even my husband and I weren't willing to put them back on).

Did we look perfect? For a second, yes.  Were our costume perfect? For a second, maybe. Is this kind of perfection ever worth striving for? Probably not.

So do yourself a favor and don't judge your entire life against another's moment of perfection.

Marcia