There’s the perfect dinner with friends, and then there’s the one you risk hosting—
The perfect phrasing on a card or thank-you note, and then there’s the one that gets done.
The perfect family gathering, and then there are the memories you actually make.
If you’re waiting for perfect before you act, you always will.
Are you standing still in any of your key roles? Do you have plans which have never turned to action? “What are you waiting for?
The perfect moment?
The perfect idea?
The perfect resource?
Are you waiting for someday when you have graduated, arrived, or have some pile of achievements? That pursuit is a like a threshold that “fades forever and forever as you move.“ On a practical level, the gift of the Gospel that arrives with Christmas is the freedom to live the abundant life as you go, not after you get there.
Remember Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree? The one he got was better than the ones everyone didn’t get. Too many important moments are stifled by the fear of imperfect performances. Teddy Roosevelt’s encouragement never gets old–
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Your family and friends aren’t expecting or even wanting perfect. They want you. The pressure’s off. Do it all this year as you are.
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