good enough

This is not an answer to the Hump Day Hmm question, but it is a response to Julie's post about Elizabeth Edwards. Read it first, if you have a minute. And you know you do.

I spent the day at Georgia's Mom's house, admiring the view (you should see her back yard), changing diapers, and talking about maternal guilt. (As an aside, old friends are like siblings without the mess. You get all the comradery of shared experience, without the stickiness of family dynamics. It's really nice.) Anyway, we were talking about guilt created by expectations, and learning to accept that sometimes "good enough" has to be good enough. Not an easy lesson to learn for either us, repentant perfectionists that we are.

Then I came home and read Julie's post, and it reminded me of something I heard recently: Others' opinions of us stick only when they confirm something we already believe about ourselves.

I have this friend who is completely put together. Her family eats only fresh and organic food, she works out every day, she's involved in several clubs and groups, she disciples other women. She's one of those people that I would love to hate, if only she wasn't so genuine and thoughtful and kind. And on my bad days, she becomes the measuring stick of everything I'm not doing right. I was saying this to my mom one day, about how I couldn't even get a shower, and here so-and-so has a week's worth of dinners prepared. My mom's response was, "Well give her a gold star."

Indeed. What do I win for being perfect? Only the chance to do it all again tomorrow. When I think of the energy I have spent trying to live up to perceived expectations, which are really only my own perfectionistic tendencies bouncing back in my face, I'm ashamed.

So when I hear Elizabeth Edwards - then Julie - say, "You don't get to say," I know that I mostly need to say that to myself. I don't get to say that my best wasn't good enough, not yet. Because in mothering, my measuring stick is not whether the floors were vacuumed (they weren't), or even if nobody cried (they did). It's in the strength of my relationship to my husband and children in ten years. It's in seeing my children internalize our family's values and faith. Toward this end my success remains to be seen. I don't get to say it didn't work, not yet. Clean floors and extracurricular activities, well, all I get for them are gold stars.

Hump Day Hmm - in and out of stride

Toby: "Are you really comfortable walking around with a name like Elsie Snuffin?"

Elsie: "I've never been comfortable, but I'm not sure it's because of my name."

- from The West Wing

I read something that caught my attention on Adrienne's blog a few weeks ago: one sign of a child having a healthy attachment is if he smiles at his reflection or picture. Isn't that interesting? Even as babies, if we know we are loved, we can look in a mirror and like what we see. It reminds me of Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What, which talks, in part, about how we all need someone outside of ourselves to tell us who we are. Who we believe determines who we become.

The question of the day is what it means to walk out of stride. But it seems only a partial question to me. Walk out of stride with whom? About what? Most of it is relative, isn't it? I'm more liberal than one, more conservative than another. I'm more structured than some parents, more relaxed than others. My house is cleaner than this friend's, dirtier than that one's. Is that what lines us up? Are we "in stride" only when we are alike? Maybe. Then how much does it matter if I'm out of stride with someone else? Does that define our relationship? Only if they are my measuring stick. Only if I'm giving them the authority to tell me who I am.

There really is nothing more comforting than finding someone who is like-minded. The best compliment I have ever heard was given by a friend who had just fallen in love with her now-husband. "He just ... gets me." It's what we all want. When I find friends who get me, with whom I am naturally in stride in all the ways that really matter (which have nothing to do with housekeeping or politics), I usually hold on pretty tight. In this season of life, we seem to have found that. But even when I have it, it doesn't define me. It defines my experience, in many ways, and certainly affects my comfort. But being out of stride with a group is mostly a reflection of context. It doesn't make either of us wrong; it just makes me different.

On my best days, I can believe who God says I am. In my most rational moments, I can trust His voice above any other. I choose to believe Him, to give Him the authority to tell me who I am. When my emotions cooperate with that decision, it's a good day. But even when they don't, I've made my choice. Finding friends who agree with me - that's just icing on the cake.