Monday, November 24, 2008
Finding joy in imperfection
It's taken me a lifetime to learn that pursuing perfection sets our teeth on edge. At every failure we berate ourselves. Why bother, we think. It's an impossible task. And that's exactly what it is -- an impossible task. We are human. We are not God. We fall, we get up again, we move forward, we fall, we get up again. What a journey. I have learned more from my falling than I ever learned from flight. More from failure than from success. More from suffering than from an absence of suffering. I've learned to keep my hand lifted so that God can raise me up. What joy to find that presence always there.
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About Me
- Beryl Singleton Bissell
- Beryl is the author of The Scent of God: A Memoir published by Counterpoint NY in 2006 and A View of the Lake published by Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. in 2001. She’s been living on Lake Superior for seventeen wonderful years, and spent 10 years writing two popular columns for the Cook County News Herald: Newcomer Notes and Putting Down Roots. Beryl is past president of the Schroeder Area Historical Society and a long-time chair of its Oral History and Marketing committees. She is a past board member of the Violence Prevention Center in Grand Marais and committee member for the Grand Marais Art Colony’s first ever annual North Shore Reader and Writers Festival. She’s been published in the Sun Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, Lake Superior Magazine, and The Trenton Times and in the anthologies, Surviving Ophelia published by Perseus Publications in 2001 and The New Writer's Handbook, Vol. 2, published by Scarletta Press in 2008 and was named Best of Minnesota Writers by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She is currently working on her third memoir: the sequel to The Scent of God.
6 comments:
I need this reminder, too. Flight and success fall short of struggle and failure, in important ways. Thanks much!
Wow. Thank you Beryl. That's just what I needed to read today!
What a wonderful reminder, Beryl - thank you. I think I needed to read this today, too. Thanks for being the messenger.
Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving!
I agree, but I am wondering...
if we stopped and thought about our successes, maybe we would learn there too. The imperfections are stopping points.
Good thought Stratoz. There is wisdom to be found in every moment provided we are open to them. The value in the failings is that we are so clearly not calling the shots . . . were it up to us we'd be perfect already.
I have always liked that verse in Romans where we are told that "therein is the righteousness of God revealed" unto us, "from faith to faith". Thank God for the high points, the mountain tops; but it is in-between where we, in being reminded of our "perfection" in comparison to He who is perfect, also realize how deep His grace....
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