You have no idea how many times I have started a blog (too many). I have a tendency to get crippled by the idea of perfection, I want to have the perfect name for my blog, the perfect logo, the perfect tagline. In fact, I get so caught up in the idea of perfection that I don’t even start. I want to write about blogs, art, photography, books, cooking, traveling, plaguing questions, church, music, marketing, crafting, house decorating… the list goes on. How can all of that fit in a perfect little box?
The answer? It can’t. No matter how hard I try, I can’t reach perfection. It’s a silly thing to strive for when you really think about it. Does that mean that I shouldn’t try to do things well? Absolutely not. But we can’t let the idea of all the possibilities keep us from ever starting.
A friend of mine shared this photo on Facebook this morning. As someone who loves to host/entertain, I was drawn to this immediately. My husband and I just had some friends over for dinner this weekend and I found it so tempting to go through and overanalyze everything in my house.
Hospitality. It picks up the house, but doesn’t feel the need to conceal evidence of everyday life. It sometimes sits...
Posted by Proverbs 31 Ministries on Tuesday, January 19, 2016
I think (hope) that most of the time my heart is in the right place, I love to make people feel at home, comfortable and fed, but how easy is it to take that one step too far in your thinking. “Oh, if I just swap this new piece of art with that old one I don’t like anymore, then the house will be PERFECT.” There it is again, that pesky drive for perfection.
As Danielle (my friend who posted the photo) and I started talking about how this can be such a fine line, between seeking to impress and seeking to bless, I realized something. I am all to eager to clean my house when I invite company over, when I am seeking to impress someone. But as a naturally chaotic and messy person, I often ignore the requests of my husband, who would prefer to keep the house clean. Here is my real chance to bless someone, and not just someone, my husband.
It’s in these everyday moments that I have a chance to really bless him, to show him that he is of value to me. it’s in these moments where I am not seeking to impress that my true colors come through. It’s in these moments that I see how much work I still have to do.
And it was in this moment of thinking this morning that I realized that I need to stop seeking perfection when it comes to my blog. My goal is to post something here a couple of times a week, but I am setting no restrictions, some days it might be a song that I am playing on repeat, some days it might be a new recipe that I want to share. I hope that it will spark conversation, inspire or bless someone.