Missy has it altogether. She arises early every morning, showers, dresses, and checks the mirror to make sure her makeup and hair are just right before she heads to the kitchen. She prepares breakfast for her husband and four children. Afterwards, she loads the dishwasher, packs her husband’s lunch and sends him off to work. She sees to it that her children are dressed, have their teeth brushed, and all their homework in their backpacks.
She has her weekly routine of household chores laid out before her. In addition to Monday’s laundry and changing all the bedding, she vacuums, dusts, and tidies her immaculate house. She takes meat out for supper, and bakes either chocolate chip, oatmeal or snidckerdoodle cookies to fill the cookie jar.
One day, her best friend came over at 10:30 on a Monday morning. “Time for coffee?” her friend asked cheerfully.
“Well, I was just about to bake cookies…”
“Can it wait? I have something very important I want to talk to you about.”
“Well, okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“You,” her friend said softly, rubbing the top of Missy’s hand.
“Me?” she asked, puzzled. She poured each of them a cup of coffee and sat across from her friend at a small coffee-for-two table.
“You are my best friend,” Sarah began hesitantly. “Your house looks nice – it always looks nice. I guess that’s what I want to talk to you about.” She looked at Missy, drawing the corner of her lower lip between her teeth.
“My clean house? You want to talk to me about my clean house?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes, but it’s more than that. Please hear me out before you say anything.” And Missy nodded.
“You are a perfectionist by nature – and there’s nothing wrong with that. God is a perfectionist too, by His nature, and since you are created in His image, you will have some of His characteristics, but in an imperfect way. Stay with me her,” she invited. “You see, you are trying to make yourself perfect, and it is humanly impossible. Besides, it is way too stressful to try to keep up a perfect image – one that says you have it all together.”
“God will make you perfect on the day you are conformed to the image of His Son, ” Sarah continued, “but before that day, enjoy being a human being; yet with the anticipation of the day you will be made perfect. You see, when God created a beautifully ordered world, it reflectd His perfection, His love, His sovereignty. But your immaculate house is just…just a clean house. It’s not a home. It doesn’t reflect love – only cleanness. You are like a housekeeper without a home,” Sarah added softly.
With head bowed, Missy thought for a few minutes. She had to admit to herself that her friend was right. Compassion is better than perfection.
Sarah realized Missy had figured something out so she said, “Jesus said we are to ‘love one another, even as He loved us.’ That means you are to value others more than a clean house.”
“But I love my family. That’s why I want everything to be perfect for them,” she mumbled, not at all sure why she offered such a feeble excuse. But then, she nodded. “You are absolutely right. I will seek to show my love by time invested – not with a polishing rag.”
“You got it!” Sarah said.