(note: this is a long post, and it's not even a fun and happy story. But because I want this blog to be about our family and to my family, I chose to share these thoughts here. Feel free to read it or skip it- I just needed to record it.)
Wow! That's what I keep repeating in my head and aloud to my husband. Wow! Total paradigm shift! I see things differently now and I keep looking at aspects of my life and seeing how this mindframe has applied to those areas. Wow!
At some point in my "date" with my husband I realized that my mental expectations of "my perfect husband" and TLOML were very different people. At that point, I was certain that was entirely HIS fault and truly felt that if he loved me enough he could be more like "my perfect husband". And, while feeling this way, I also believed myself to be reasonable, right, and justified in my expectations. I wasn't trying to change who my husband was, I was just trying to help him see that when he is his "best self" he is better.
I tried and tried to express to him how I felt- tried to tell him that I needed things to be different but I wasn't asking him to change. (it didn't work!) He left our room, and the conversation hurt and I didn't really understand why.
Then, I began to see things differently. This is where the first shift took place. I saw myself as I am now and realized I am broken. Instantly I have three images in my head. One is a beautiful clear glass sphere- radiating light, beauty, love and happiness. Another is shattered glass. And, the other is a crackled glass vase. Each of them represents me. I was the sphere. I was happy, I loved life, and I loved ME! It's hard to remember when that stopped - I remember when I had it, but can't recognize when I lost it. Perhaps that is because it was not all lost at once- I am sure there are several things in life that clouded, scratched, and broke off pieces of myself. Some of them were words and actions of others, some of them were choices of my own, some of them were just the trials of life. But, throughout time, I lost what I was completely. I became the shattered glass. I became broken. Again it is hard to pinpoint a time in my life when this broken began to define me. Unlike the rock that broke the glass in my mental picture, it was not a single blow that broke me and it can not be a single repair that will fix me. So, we have me now. I am the crackled glass. I am no longer in pieces, I even present with a smooth exterior. But inside I am still cracked. Sometimes those cracks heal and the inside becomes a bit smoother, sometimes they are re-damaged and the cracks become large, sometimes my light and beauty shine brightly, other times I am very dim. Knowing this I realized what I was asking of my husband- not to fix HIMSELF but to help me continue to fix ME! Help me to smooth and repair those cracks.
Second shift is even bigger than the first. I began to see that I was creating the separation between "my perfect husband" and TLOML. Not that I was making my husband into who he is, but that I was expecting him to be what I thought he should be. As much as I thought I wasn't, I was trying to change my husband (I thought he needed fixed, not me). I felt that my expectations were fair, because I wasn't expecting him to be perfect, just perfect for me. (It's not that my expectations have changed as much, but my understanding of what I expect has). I saw now, that I have several expectations of "perfect for me" things. I can easily pull up five or ten lists at any given moment of what I need to do to create these perfect for me things. (the perfect homeschool, the pefect laundry room, the perfect scrapbook, the perfect menu plan, the perfect chore chart, the perfect schedule, etc.) I realized that because I wasn't ready to make all of these things perfect, I had settled for these things being less than average. (I do not have my perfect laundry room to do laundry in, for example, so my living room is always covered in laundry). I took the thought that anything worth doing is worth doing right to an unhealthy extreme. I wouldn't do things I couldn't do "perfectly". Nothing was perfect, because nothing was getting done. I'd spent so much time planning and preparing to make things perfect that I'd fall short of making things good, or even average. I have not yet thought of an aspect of my life that this does NOT apply to. Wow! Wow! I have really overlooked this for a long time, and it has seeped into every aspect of my life.
But no more! My new mantra to live by is "Don't allow your quest for perfection to cause you to settle for something less than average. Don't let yourself loose your battles before you've begun to fight them." It's a lot to live up to, but I'm trying not to worry and plan. I am trying to just try and work on it. I am hoping for a good, not perfect outcome. Because good is so much better than below average. Wow! So much better!
