Devotional Series – Week 3: Ms. Perfection Has Left the Building

With Behind Those Eyes having just been released for purchase (Buy it here now!), I thought I’d post a portion from the book this week. This story is from the first section of the book, called The Great Charade. It is excerpted from the chapter on Ms. Perfection, and it is all about our need for others to see us as perfect rather than our willingness to get real about our struggles. As this story begins, I have just finished writing about something I call The Great Sunday Morning Fake-out, (if you're interested in what that is, you’ll have to get the book to read about it! :)), and I am talking about an instance when I took part in a Sunday Morning Fake-out of my own, on an Easter Sunday morning, a few years ago…


My children at the time were ages eight, six, and four. Although the oldest two are boys and are no longer willing to wear matching clothes, they still allow me to dress all three of them in coordinating colors. This Easter, I took particular care in picking out just the right suits, shirts, and shoes for the boys to go with the bright plaid dress my daughter was to wear. As I am sure most people know, the unspoken rule about Easter attire is that the female outfit takes precedent over the male outfit. (Women from the South know this, especially.) So the color scheme of green was built around a size 4 toddler dress for our little Easter princess.

In my quest to find perfect outfits for the children, I had nearly forgotten to shop for myself. While some years I simply wore an existing outfit on Easter Sunday, this year I was determined to get something new. I don’t have anything green, I reasoned. With the day looming closer, I managed to make a quick trip to the mall without the children in tow. I tried on quite a few things until finally I found just the right skirt and matching shirt-sweater combination. I quickly purchased it and headed home.

Easter Sunday came, along with the usual morning rush. After getting the children dressed, I consulted with my husband on his outfit and got dressed in my own. I was pleased with my green patterned shirt, beautiful green sweater, and bright, white skirt. I was starched and ready.

We took a few pictures, loaded up the car, and left for church. To my delight, things were running rather smoothly for a Sunday morning. We arrived at the church and entered the sanctuary. Our pastor had encouraged us to bring our entire families to the service with us, which we had decided to do. We greeted my parents inside and took our seats on a row midway up. While the children drew pictures and worked puzzles, the adults worshiped. The music was uplifting, the sermon was inspiring, and we looked just perfect. Things couldn’t have been better.

About halfway through the service, I looked down at my crisp, clean white linen skirt. That’s when I noticed a glaring flaw in the plan. Right down the middle of my skirt, stretching from my left side to my right, was a bright, royal blue pen mark smiling back at me. Horrified at what I saw, I realized the only way to remove the stain was to take it to the dry cleaners. I couldn’t believe that after all my stressing and striving, the look I wanted to achieve that Easter morning was ruined with a mark from my son’s pen. So much for perfection, I thought.

I learned a great lesson from that simple story. It was as if God said to me, Lisa, you can prepare and plan and anticipate things and seek perfection. But just in case you have forgotten that you are anything but perfect, let this remind you of just that. The pen mark symbolized to me the imperfections in my life, no matter how well thought out and organized I may be.

Women, the truth is that God doesn’t have to prove anything to us to let us see our imperfections. We can manage that all on our own. As 2 Corinthians 3:5 tells us, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves.” It doesn’t take us very long to see and know that in our flesh, perfection is not even remotely possible.

Lisa