Pursuit of perfection

I have come to the realization that the pursuit of perfection is paralyzing. Or at least I'm trying to remind myself of this as I make a mental shift from pursuing perfection to striving for excellence.

• In the pursuit of perfection, nothing is good enough...I overanalyze to find the "perfect" way to do something. The "good enough" way is just fine and still gets the job done. For the most part, the only one that's going to know the difference between the two is me.
• In the pursuit of perfection, I constantly compare myself with others who I think have it more "together" than I do, and then feel inferior and/or guilty that I can't do what they do, how they do it. God didn't make me THEM, he made me ME. I'm not SUPPOSED to do things the way they do them per se, or live their lives the way they live it. I'm supposed to live mine the way HE WANTS ME TO, to the BEST OF MY ABILITY, allowing HIM to shine through me, ESPECIALLY in the areas of my deficiencies, so that HE is glorified.
• In the pursuit of perfection, we mask our true selves. We don't necessarily allow others to get to know us, warts and all. How can we grow, or allow ourselves to be used in others lives if we don't walk with them...through both the good and the bad? How do we know that our bad times aren't being sent for the purpose of helping a brother or sister in Christ? If we pursue perfection and mask our pain, our difficulties, our deficiencies, don't let others know what we're experiencing, how can those experiences help them?

I really think this is the area that God is working on me with right now...striving for excellence, not perfection and just doing the best that I can do without stretching myself to the point of breaking.

I'm ready to be really real. I have a full life. A really full life. I am a wife, a mom to two kids, a full-time employee (read: mom to another 300 or so students). My husband has had a crazy schedule for our entire marriage that has rarely involved working in the same town. Cleaning is a low priority. News flash...if you drop in on me, my house is probably messy, there are probably clothes on the couch. They're most likely clean and laid out, waiting to be put away, but they're there.

That isn't how I envision my house in my head. I WANT it to look like a picture out of a magazine. I WANT it to smell like the "correct" scent for whatever season it is. I WANT to have all the ingredients for homemade cookies all of the time so that I can just "pop" them in on a whim. I WANT to always have the stuff for the cutsie crafts for me and my kids to do.

But hey, that doesn't happen.

I make cupcakes from the box. We colors in coloring books. We use sidewalk chalk. Matt buys whatever scent candles he wants, because somewhere, I have a wonderful wickless candle and warmer set that hasn't been plugged back in since the move (yes, almost a year). Kids craft magazines come to my house with wonderful ideas for me, and *someday* I'll get the stuff for them and we'll do them some weekend.

Let's just get real.