Be ye Perfect

I was working on the wedding portrait of my son and his bride to be, and flinging my brush with disgust every few strokes.
"OH NO!"
"What's wrong?" asked Asherel, glancing up from her math book.
"I ruined Karissa! It at least looked like her before. I don't know what I did to ruin it and now I don't know what to do to make it better."
Asherel who has an excellent artist eye, looked carefully at it.
"Her teeth are too dark and the shadows around Matt's eyes are too dark. And his nose is too long."
She left the room.
I went back to work on it and then stepped back.

"Don't do anything else!" cried Asherel returning.
"It does look like them all of a sudden, doesn't it?" I smiled.
"Yes," she said.
And if it doesn't look like them to them, in twenty years it won't look like them anyway and they will look back fondly on those days when they looked so young, so in love, so beautiful, so hopeful.  The strange thing is, I don't know what small change, what small dab of color transformed them from strangers to familiar faces. I am convinced that God got sick of waiting and just grabbed my hand and guided me.

In my art class yesterday, one of my most gifted students was drawing a portrait. I showed him where his line was off by miniscule centimeters.
"This may sound picky," I said, "But if you are off at all in a portrait..."
"It won't look like them!" we said in unison. It is gratifying to have someone who so completely gets it.

My friend Danielle is an agility handler. She is a lovely and unconsciously humble soul, comfortable in her own skin. Her husky is in the running for being one of the top agility dogs in his breed. She just finished a trial where she placed three times, with 2 seconds and a third. She found this a disappointing result.
"In my level," she told me, "You can't make any mistakes. You must be  perfect."

I seem to be bumping up against this message of perfection, time and time again. I am a perfectionist, or used to be. Until I got tired. I looked around my house with the bathroom that hasn't been scrubbed in....well, a long time..... and the dog smears on the windows, and the dust bunnies hopping in the corners. I would never have allowed that a few years ago. I also seem to be wearing stretchy polyester alot all of a sudden. Slowly, comfort and ease seem more alluring, and reaching for impossible standards less so.

And then God sent me the wedding portrait.

I sat in the car last night waiting for Asherel to leave youth group at Church. The minutes stretched on. So I pulled out my Droid, and started sketching the moon and the limbs of the tree against the sky. You may think all I was doing was killing time, and at first, that is what I thought too. But then I realized that a still, quiet voice in my soul was whispering, "If you reach for the moon, you may fall short, but if you don't reach for it, you will certainly never touch it."

Psalm 18:30
As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.

Isaiah 26:3
You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.

Matthew 5:48
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.