My Life as a Perfectionist…

Do you remember that day from your childhood when something so traumatic happened that it changed the course of your life? I remember that day for me like it was yesterday.

It was 1987, I was 7 years old. I lived with my parents and my two sisters, Jan - 16 and Susie - 10. It was a sunny day. My family lived in the country, out in the middle of a beautiful field surrounded by cattle. We had a huge oak tree in our front yard that shaded our house. I loved sitting and watching the leaves swaying in the wind. My family was sitting in the living room having one of our infamous family meetings. As we sat and I watched the tree branch shadows dancing on the green grass I heard my parents tell us that a very close family member was pregnant at the age of 16. Well, at 7 years old I had no idea what all that meant. I only knew that we were going to have a baby in the family soon.

As weeks went on I realized this was not the exciting time my young mind thought it was. I saw my parents arguing more than usual, my mom crying a lot, we moved churches, and the family member that was pregnant was not her usual self. There was so much immediate change in our family dynamics, I did not know how to keep up. I saw my parents devastation and it kept getting worse. That was when a huge change was made in myself. I was always an anxious child and a people pleaser, but from that point on I vowed to never disappoint someone I love the way our family member did. This crept into all my relationships and goals in life. I did not want to do anything that disappointed my parents, teachers, friends, even God. I started having panic attacks that would keep me up at night worrying about what the next day would bring. At the age of 10 I was put on an anti depressant to control these panic attacks.

When I was a teenager in high school, this particular family member got married to a man and had 3 children with him. She began a life of drug abuse and exotic dancing. Once again, that was a blow to our family that bruised each of us deeply. I strived to be the daughter that did everything right. I graduated high school and went on to college with a heavy burden that I had to make my parents proud. I had to do everything right so that maybe, just maybe, it would make up for the mistakes our family member made. I had hoped my parents would focus on my achievements and not be so broken.

I carried around this shame, perfectionist thinking, and huge feeling of responsibility. It was so bad I did not even tell my friends in college about my family dynamics. I wanted this family member to be blocked from my memory. I was so angry at her. I expected her to strive to be perfect the way I was striving to be perfect. A perfectionist seems to always expect others to want to be perfect too. It’s odd to us when people just don’t seem to care if a throw pillow is turned the wrong direction or they did not get the grade on a test they were hoping for.

This expectation for me and everything I did to be perfect carried on into my adulthood. I tried to live this life of denial and pretend that my family was not dealing with drug abuse and sexual immorality, but it was constantly being thrown in my face. I would be volunteering at a Christian conference and meet a man that said in his past he met my family member in the strip club. He even told me he was the one that bought her breast implants. Or I would have people that got confused and thought I was the family member who was the stripper. No matter how hard I tried to run from my family’s past, it still showed up.

After I got married my panic attacks came back with a vengeance. I was so scared I was going to do something to disappoint my husband. My thoughts revolved around letting down those I love. I made the choice to start going to counseling and learned how to control the panic attacks and emotions I tried to bury. The counseling might have healed the panic attacks and I no longer had to be on medication for them but the perfectionism was not gone. When we had children I wanted more than anything to be the perfect mother. For you mothers out there you know that is not an obtainable task. This was when I fully realized I cannot maintain this lifestyle. I felt like a greyhound dog in a race. The dogs are running as fast as they can to catch that lure, or windsock, that is dangling out in front of them. They run and run and run and never get that colorful windsock always just out of their reach. Perfection was always something I was grasping for, but could never obtain. It was when my 5-year-old daughter told me “Mom, you don’t have to be perfect, God loves you just the way you are” that I realized how much my children saw this unhealthy expectation I have on myself. I always knew it was there, I just thought I hid it from everyone else. I realized I do not want to create in them this false idea that we can be any shape or form of perfection.

Most people have a pull of determination and achievement, but some of us have an even more powerful pull to be perfect.  Is that striving for perfection too much?  Is that something we should expect in our lives?  If that is a place in your life where you struggle, then you have found the right website. God has place it on my heart to equip and advise women struggling with perfectionism, so that they may be secure in who God made them to be as they carry out the calling on their life. We are made perfect in God’s image but we live in a fallen world. We are to strive to be Christ-like, but there is a reason God needs to give us grace. There is a reason Jesus had to die on the cross to save us. He had to save us from ourselves, our many failures and sins.

Presently, as I deal with my own sins and failures, I struggle with how I judged my family member in the past. I love her and realize that our God is big enough to forgive us both for the choices and disappointments we have created in our lives. This world that we so many times narrow mindedly think only revolves around us, truly revolves around Jesus Christ and what we can do for Him. He has called each of us into His royal priesthood to live our lives for Him and only Him. This strive for perfectionism that so many of us try to grasp is a selfish act that only harms our relationships with family, friends, and God.

*Names were changed in the story for privacy protection.