Growing with Grace

"Mom! She's just playing the same notes over and over again!" My brother didn't often complain about my hours of practicing piano but that day I was determined to iron out the last kinks of the latest Handel sonata. It was so close. Almost perfect. After six hours I could play each section independently without mistakes but try and put the whole thing together and they popped up like so many weeds in my garden! I decided to rest my fingers and knew with satisfaction that tomorrow I would finally achieve my goal. It would be perfect. I could finally call myself a "pianist." 

If only I could counsel that little girl. If only she could understand that it wasn't about technical perfection. Music is about emotion, beauty, purpose, grace. It is for your own growth, benefit, and enjoyment primarily and others enjoyment secondarily. Life, too. But I was a goal oriented, highly motivated, competitive perfectionist. Those fluffy sentiments were too abstract for my concrete mind. But the reality is I made unachievable goals. There is no such thing as a perfect performance. There are beautiful works of art but artists are notoriously unsatisfied with their work. She said she wanted perfection. She really just wanted to be okay. To be loved. To be wanted. To be valued.

A few months after an unsatisfying but reportedly impressive performance I was told some of the worst news of my life. No more piano lessons. We couldn't afford them. 

But I knew it wasn't about not affording them. I had earned enough money on my own by that time to realize my family's finances were a problem with priorities, not cash flow. Once again, I was not a priority. 

I wasn't good enough.

Another link in the chain that bound me to perfectionism. I had believed in Jesus Christ as my savior as a seven-year-old, realizing that God is perfect and I couldn't live with him unless I had Jesus' help. It was the exact opposite of perfectionism but I've had so much internal bent and outside reinforcement that it's been a constant struggle to understand God's grace, his unmerited favor, throughout my adult life.

I hope that in sharing my journey you too can come to value God's grace and to allow Him to work his good purposes in your life. 

We can hope for perfection but not in this life. We can strive for holiness but not on our own. We can work toward justice but we will always be disappointed until God's grace brings us into his presence. But my greatest stumbling block was the belief that God would only "help those who help themselves." In Kyle Idleman's book "Grace is Greater" he wrote "We're able to receive God's grace only to the extent we're able to recognize our need for it." 

Oh how I need it. And the more I experience God's grace the more I realize I need. A lifetime of striving for perfection has hammered into my soul just how impossible that is. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph 2:8-9)