Love is Alive: Ever Perfecting

Perfection is in the striving, and it's never a striving that says you're not good enough. Rather, it is a striving that says you are perfected in love, and I have so much more for you. I find these words particularly meaningful that they came from Paul. If we think about Paul before his conversion, he was considered blameless under the law. But he is so convinced of his faith in Christ that he trades blameless, predictable clarity for the messiness of a Jesus follower. [01:00:12] (46 seconds)  #PerfectionInStriving

Not that any of us will be perfect in the way that we think of that word, not that we'll be without our flaws or temptations or even our sin, but that as we mature as Christian people, we are shaping our lives to be more and more Christ like. Wesley says that we are perfected in love, that we are habitually filled with the love of god and neighbor, and that is Christian perfection. It's found in the striving, in the journey, and that there's no end point in this lifetime. [00:46:24] (45 seconds)  #PerfectionIsAJourney

But I should have gone. I can't imagine how overwhelming it must have been to be a teenager in that parking lot, deal giving statements to the police and dealing with angry people. She needed me. Now I think that my kids would tell you that I have shown up for them far more times than not when they needed. And even though no mother wants to open a Mother's Day card that says thank you for being good enough, When I remember the moments that I missed the mark, I am grateful for the concept of the good enough mother. [00:58:09] (48 seconds)  #GoodEnoughMom

Much like I am grateful for the idea as Christian people that we are made perfect in love with all of our flaws because our perfection comes in the striving. I think both ideas have profound meaning for us as individuals as as well as for our closest relationships because when I remember that I'm on a journey, I can also remember that you are on a journey. And even though our journeys may be different, I can have grace for your journey, for the grace that has been given for my journey. [00:58:56] (40 seconds)  #GraceForTheJourney

Now maybe you've heard a preacher say this before or maybe not, but I think Mother's Day Sunday may indeed be the most challenging Sunday of the year to preach for a few reasons. First of all, it's not a Christian holiday. Of course, though, we want to honor mothers in the church, but it's just so very complicated because in every sanctuary sits people who are for the first Mother's Day, grieving the loss of their own mother or grieving the loss of their child. [00:47:25] (38 seconds)  #MothersDayIsComplicated

But rest assured in the counseling world, we know that, and it's okay. In fact, we have a term that we call the good enough mother, the good enough mother. Now, of course, we're referring to whoever a primary caregiver was for a child, but the good enough mother refers to this idea that babies and young children especially, they need enough care and they need that care to be reliable enough that their world is predictable enough to feel safe, that they can expect their needs to be attended to most of the time reliably. [00:50:36] (41 seconds)  #ConsistentCareMatters

Well, sometimes I think that the expectations we have for what a mother should be just set all of us up for failure and disappointment. Often in my counseling office, my patients tell me that their mothers say things to them like, well, I suppose you're telling her about all of my mistakes. And truthfully, sometimes, that's true, because all parents make mistakes. And if you tell me that yours didn't, I'm gonna tell you you weren't paying attention because all parents make mistakes. [00:49:52] (44 seconds)  #NoPerfectParents

And it speaks to this idea that none of us get it right all the time. And frankly, if we did, nobody would be prepared for adulthood if they had never experienced any disappointment, and nobody would have ever had the opportunity to learn how to repair relationship if there wasn't first something to repair. And so it is with families that none of us get it right all the time, but in a healthy enough family, we make our mistakes, feelings get hurt, and then we make a repair. [00:51:18] (41 seconds)  #RepairAndReconnect