Dear Reader:

My mother was very organized…looking back on my childhood, I realize now she had to be in order to keep our family life intact, since she was mothering alone,with only one hand. Outwardly or subtly we learn life through our parent (s) don’t we? And I learned that settling for anything less than my best was unacceptable.

On the surface this sounds like good advice, setting a good example, but carried too far it creates perfectionism and perfectionism, unfortunately, creates inner stress and outward judgment. A stressful sense of perfectionism took awhile to develop in me. I didn’t even recognize it as such at the time.

As a timid child growing up…I realize, now, how family and friends of mother’s all helped raise us. We, constantly, heard from everyone, including Dora, our maid, that we better behave and not cause mother any added stress to her life…or as Dora put it, “Don’t you be doing nuttin’ foolish, ya hear, to upset your poor mama!”

Apparently there was an unspoken code among family and close friends to keep anything negative from mother as much as they could…including our occasional bouts of misbehavior…the kind that simply goes along with being a kid.

** As I was looking for the little photo, above, to show how timid I was when I was around 4 and 5 (around the time daddy died) I immediately thought about the miniature statue Honey sent me with the little girl with her fingers in her mouth…I sent the two (bottom) pictures to Honey and she told me how she walked by the little statue two or three times in this store in Saluda before getting it….she just seemed drawn to it and now she knows why…it was me.

Later in life, I always thought I was pretty carefree, easy-going, even ‘chillin’ cool for years, but underneath I have always been an introverted extrovert who demands a lot of herself. As social a creature as I am… there is also the same little timid girl in me that once existed who prefers playing alone, moodling, and having time each day for herself and her private thoughts.

These days I dislike any kind of meetings or deadlines (too many years of teacher meeting overload I believe) and I avoid them at all cost. I like being spontaneous and simply enjoying the moment without having to plan far ahead or worry about details. I tell people if they need something from me…please ask and if at all possible I will do it at a certain time for a certain length of time and then I am finished with it…no more long-term projects.

I have changed a lot since retiring and personally, I think, for the better. All the pressure to do what I was asked to do at the highest level I could do it…took a toll over years…particularly with my health. Ironically, it has been since my health problems appeared, that I have found the most joy in the simplest things in life, while re-discovering and re-introducing me to myself. God is the Master of Irony. We have to lose ourselves to find ourselves.

How many of you remember the old adage: “A Kiss and a Promise”…I had forgotten that old saying but a good one it is. Kate Wolf-Jensen, in a recent blog on ImPERfeCTioNiSm, remembered the best advice probably ever given her (on finding a balance in life between giving one’s best and over-perfectionism) that came from this quote out of her grandmother’s mouth.

A kiss and a promise

It’s easy to suggest letting go of attachment to productivity and harder to do it. “I’ll give it a kiss and a promise,” my grandmother would say when time or energy prevented her from cleaning things to her satisfaction. (Perfectionism is both inherited and learned, I fear.) Though I knew her only by hearsay, Grandma gave me a helpful tool for releasing compulsion. Sometimes, my promise can be to return to finish the job. Other times my promise might be say to the project and myself “you are enough!”

I am at the “perfect” place in my life now for writing this blog. Each blog requires just the immediate thoughts running through my mind on any particular day with little long-term conditions attached. (unless I am away several days on vacation)

“Little c” has made me brave and no longer scared of my own self-imposed perfectionist tendencies. And, along, with this transition of learning to accept and love myself as a person, my tendency to judge others by my own criteria has diminished. I now see the vast majority of people in my life as simply a child of God who, like me, are just trying to cope with life by re-discovering that we don’t have to prove ourselves worthy of love and belonging. We have and have always had that from our Creator. He loves us just the way we are.

Whew! Trying to live up to our own highest standards can be exhausting. But these days acceptance of life and love the way it is has proven to be the healthiest medicine in my life.

So until tomorrow… a “lick and a promise” or a “kiss and a promise” is the best way to take stress out of our lives…after all, think about it… God doesn’t rush around to get everything done…He performs miracles and answers to prayers in His own Good Time/God time… with a “kiss and a promise.”

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

* Our first ‘perfect word’ memento participant….Carolyn Sweat sent me a message yesterday morning that simply said: “Finished!” And it was! (Carolyn and I share the same perfect word for 2017…so it is only fitting that our candles share the same light!) Great Job Carolyn!

When I finished typing the blog yesterday, around noon, I went to locate that little childhood photo of me in today’s blog. I figured it was probably in one of several scrapbooks and I groaned inwardly… the scrapbook bookshelf was a wreck!

I have been going through the scrapbooks to find photos to use at the wedding reception and by Christmas the book shelf was crammed with more “stuff” than you could shake a stick at… and the whole corner of the “Happy Room” needed cleaning and clearing out badly.

I had just about finished cleaning that dirty corner by the side of the fireplace when I walked by the refrigerator, and there on the side, was the picture on a magnet staring back at me I had been looking for all morning.

I had to laugh but at least it had gotten me to clean out that yucky corner I had put off for too, too long. (Forgot to take a before photo…but my rocking chair had been wedged in that corner, too, to make room for the Christmas tree…It was a crowded mess…here are the final visual results….including hauling the rocking chair back to its rightful corner on the other side of the den.) Whew!

*Look what Anne got from our eternal symbol  of giving “Santa Claus” Honey Burrell for Nala.

Anne emailed me the photo and this expression of gratitude ” Look what Honey made for Nala! I was astounded by her LOVING gesture- how sweet was that?”