perfect

"It's rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to choose to dance, to choose to love your life.  It's much easier and much more common to be miserable.  But I choose to do what I can do to create hope, to celebrate life, and the act of celebrating connects me back to that life I love.  We could just live our normal, day-to-day lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think today, just plain today, is worth it." -Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

I cannot tell you how much this quote fits into my life at the moment.  my life is currently in a state of war, a battle between letting all the things that aren't perfect affect my outlook, making me frustrated and dissatisfied, and choosing to look past all those imperfect things and see the beautiful life I have been given.  this week has been a long one in so many ways and there are a lot of things that I let get to me, let scratch at my brain until my unhappiness covered me like grime on a window.  it distorted my view and blocked out the sun that was shining outside.  it's a long story, one that I'm not going to go into, because it isn't the point.  what is the point is that I let it all affect me, and what a mess it left.  it's a struggle to write at the moment because of this battle, but I think by the end of this post, it will all be spilling out as usual. 

we all have these ideas of what our life would be like if it were perfect.  if we were just a little bit prettier or smarter, or we had more friends, or if we were dating that one guy, instead of just being one of his best friends.  and we forget that the lives we have are perfect.  not because nothing is wrong, but because they are the lives that we have, the lives we are meant to be living right now.  true perfection does not exist in our world, only in the next.  but I like to define perfection as it is in our world as the chaotic, messy, beautiful state that things are at their core.  perfection to me is the deepest bit of your soul, the bit you try not to show people, but the bit that comes out when life hits hard, when you feel pure emotion, when you're in love, when you get sick of keeping up appearances and open up that little bird cage inside of you and let yourself out.  perfection to me is life not going the way you want it to in your head, is improvising, is taking chances, is seeing beauty in the imperfection.  perfection is refusing to pretend, but singing in the face of heartbreak, laughing in the face of fear, dancing in the face of grief. 

because life will go on until it's over.  doesn't that sound so obvious, so incredibly evident?  I forget it all the time.  we all do.  we all act as if our lives will end if we don't get the job or the guy or the dress.  but they won't.  they'll just change.  we'll find a different job, marry a different guy, buy a cheaper dress that our friends will still compliment incessantly.  and that will be the way things were supposed to be all along, we just couldn't see it in the midst of our disappointment.  that will be perfection.  and our God is trying to tell us that each and every day.  "I want to say, 'What can I do today that brings more beauty, more energy, more hope?'  Because it seems like that's what God is saying to us, over and over.  'What can I do today to remind you again how good life is?  You think the color of the sky is good now, wait till sunset.  You think oranges are good?  Try a tangerine.'  He's a crazy delightful mad scientist and keeps coming back from the lab with great, unbelievable new things, and it's a gift.  It's a gift to be a part of it." -Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines.