ImPerfect

“Just because something is Flawed, it doesn’t mean it’s not Perfect.”

Karen Frances

Imperfections.

Like the wrinkles on my face that I would never alter or get rid of. I’ve earned every single one of them.

Or the scars on my body that remind me of the battles I have won. For now.

It is not important, the facade you chose to wear for this lifetime. True beauty, divine perfection, lies within.

When I was a child, we didn’t have much; our clothes were mostly hand me downs or donations from other family members. When I got older, I came by my cars in pretty much the same manner. ‘New’ really wasn’t part of my vocabulary. It didn’t help that when I bought a new sweater or shirt with babysitting money, it would get ruined on the very first wash, at the hands of my mother. She would yell for me to come down to the washroom and stand there laughing while she held up my sweater/shirt that had shrunk to baby doll size, or ruined by other colors that had leached into it in a haphazard pattern. I stopped buying anything new and I can honestly say I was the worst dressed person throughout my teens and early twenties; ill fitting jeans, T-shirts, oversized flannel shirts and desert boots. I didn’t really care much and yes, I have the pictures to prove it. That is until my bf Jeanie, on a mission to correct that, asked me to come visit her at the clothing store where she worked and wouldn’t let me leave until I bought a few new pieces of what she deemed, acceptable clothing.

It was a start, but a slow one, almost a trickle that gained momentum, more so in my thirties. Like the beauty within slowly making its way outward, one small piece at a time. It was there, mid-way, that I bought my first new car. I loved that it was shiny and clean, new and perfect, flawless, not a scratch on it. I was so proud, so elevated in self importance, very protective and careful. Until three days later when I noticed the ding, the scratch, the blemish on its perfect exterior, that burst my flawless fantasy and I took a deep dive off the pedestal where I had been perched. OUCH!

After that, I only bought used cars, already broken in, already scuffed and scratched, with no expectations, no pride, more acceptable of the scratches and dings and fender benders to follow. However, at that point, I had turned that microscopic critical view 180 degrees, until I was caught in the cross hairs, and now became the object that was less than, defaced and flawed. I carried that in shame and embarrassment, dreading the intimacies that came in relationships and taking an inordinate amount of time to be comfortable and then take that leap. Sometimes they waited it out, sometimes not. Sometimes I was so frazzled, I didn’t wait for the outcome. I just ran away.

As I matured both in age and wisdom and spent more time in the still, quiet place inside, and less time worrying about the world around me and all of her judgments, I started to look at myself with more reserve, some love and a whole lot of acceptance. I traded disdain and embarrassment for acceptance and self care. I bartered disappearing into my surroundings for moments fully realized in a sacred space. And as I softened to the people and things around me, I lost the exterior view and settled into the interior view.

It may be difficult to understand what you see as flaws are really the tattoos, the medals, the adornment that we display on our exterior to embellish the physical. We are all created by the same force that created the universe. Our universe; filled with black holes, asteroids colliding with celestial bodies leaving holes and jagged edges in its wake, stars burning out in the most extravagant supernova, planets with intense storms and temperatures we couldn’t ever imagine. Fragments and sunspots and neutrinos and gaseous rings, and an ever expanding cosmos we don’t fully understand. Blemished and Battered and Scary. Utter chaos. Or so it seems.

However, ponder this if you will:

“If the force or pull of gravity were to change by one quadrillionth of a percentage (that’s 0.00000000000001), the universe would cease to function the way it does now.” Craig T. Owens

And we would cease to exist.

So it was utterly “perfect” when my dear friend ‘V’ proclaimed aloud in Study Group last week, as she traced her fingers along the written word in our book, “Hey guys, look at this.

Imperfect is really ‘I’m perfect’ and ‘Impossible’ is really ‘I’m possible’.

And so we are ……..