Perfection

L turned one year old last week and I can hardly believe it (side note: we'll be celebrating this weekend, so there will be pictures to come).  This year truly has gone by so fast.  This may sound negative, although that is not my intent, but S's first year of life seemed to go by so slowly.  I counted every week, keeping track of his exact age constantly.  I tracked every milestone and checked them off in my head as he grew.  But now, having two Goobies, I barely have time to get them into clean diapers let alone track how many months, weeks, days, hours and minutes L has lived.  With S, I was terrified that if I didn't obsess track his progress he'd somehow never cut teeth or figure out how to walk.  With L, I am so much more relaxed, despite being even more busy, and it has proven to be a much more pleasant parenting experience.  And, without my obsessing tracking, L is cutting teeth, on the verge of walking, and feeding himself just fine.  Progress achieved.




Happy Birthday L!
 

I believe all new mothers experience this to some degree.  But, it is also a fact that obsession attention to detail is makes up the very fiber of my being.  I can't help it.  After some time in therapy as a young adult, I learned that my need to control and "keep up appearances" stemmed from my feeling out of control as a child.  As the oldest child, I was already predestined to become a perfectionist.  Being surrounded by a chaotic environment just added to my desire to control and protect.  This served me well in academia, but it did not serve me well in my first marriage nor in other relationships.  My desire for perfection, which does not enable me to admit failure easily, kept me in an abusive marriage for longer than I should have been.  In fact, it was some of those same reasons that put me in that marriage to begin with, ignoring red flags and other's protestations. 

I also have a very bad habit of internalizing others' problems to the point where it begins to affect me emotionally and physically.  In my mind, obsessing over something makes me feel like I'm doing something.  If I think about it long enough, I'll be able to solve whatever the problem is.  The issue with that is I end up obsessing over things I have absolutely no control over and I end up getting sick, frustrated, overwhelmed and depressed. 

I learned a great exercise in therapy that helped me to understand what I was doing and how to re-train my brain.  Choosing to not obsess over things that are outside of my control does not mean that I don't care, that I don't love, that I don't have charity.  It means that I am going to find the things I can do, do them, and not allow myself to be torn down in the process.  In a way, it's exerting charity towards myself.  Here's the exercise: you get two cups.  Label one with your name (in my case, "Brooke") and the other with the name of Jesus.  Every evening, write down on individual slips of paper what you are worried about, bothered by, stressing out about, etc.  Then, one by one, assess what you have written out and ask yourself, "Do I truly have control over this?" If you do, it goes in your cup.  If you don't, it goes in Jesus' cup.  You are allowed to pull items out of your cup one at a time to form action plans.  Anything in Jesus' cup, you can't touch.  You can't even think about it.  You have turned it over the Lord and it now belongs to Him.  If you try to retrieve that problem for yourself, you are stealing from the Lord and NO ONE wants to be guilty of that!  Every time I began to obsess about something I'd say to myself, "This belongs to the Lord.  Stop stealing!" and then I'd strive to refocus my thoughts.  Sometimes this required prayer, and that was totally within the rules.

The foundation of this exercise is having faith that Jesus can do what He's promised to do.  You have to believe that He can heal all afflictions, all infirmities, and that He can make all right.  You also have to accept that your time line does not necessarily line up with the Lord's time line.  And, the hardest part of all (for me, anyways) you have to accept and respect the free agency of others.  Individuals have to make their own choices and you can't force anything otherwise.  (But, let's be honest, it would be nice to be able to revoke someone's agency for a short time now and again.)

And, now, here I am: a perfectionist among toddlers.  Talk about irony!  While it has been a bumpy transition, S and L are teaching me so much and John's love and support have been invaluable.  I've had to let things go: the house can't be perfect all of the time or even most of the time, there will always be food one someone's clothes and the dogs have to go longer in between their baths.  Sure, we all stink, but I'm not flipping out anywhere near as much as I used to!  Progress achieved. 

Delish!