Set Backs and Perfection

image taken from: http://awakenedvibrations.tumblr.com/post/74010991698/the-fifteen-major-tests-of-the-spiritual-path

So, if you look at when my last entry was it has been quite sometime since I have last written. And like the beginning of most of my journal entries I feel the need to apologize for my lack of consistency and mention how much has happened and how much time has passed and state a resolve to do better to document my life. But I am not sure if I can make such promises here. If you could see all the drafts I have composed and the ideas and direction I have already started you could see I was on the right track. I wasn't always being lazy.

I began this blog ready and willing to go! And then an interesting thing happened. The months of retrospection before starting this blog and the reflection that happened while writing took an interesting turn. As I was beginning my second entry and writing a few entries that would be later on I hit my emotional wall. As I was making connections of events in my life I had some repressed memories come up which brought up many strong emotions which were for lack of a better word paralyzing. I could not sit down and write without having an emotional breakdown. I could not revisit my past without wanting to turn tale and run. With all my work in the emotional release therapies I had done over the past several years I obviously still had some things to work on. And I reached a point where I couldn't. 

So we put it on hold. And then of course life happens. And we get busy and this blog got pushed aside and every time it was thought of was with feelings of guilt, and anxiety. And the thing that I really wanted to do became the thing that I "have to do." The internal pressure I put on myself overwhelmed me and I didn't fell like I could do it. I was not meeting my "deadline" I felt like I was disrupting some cosmic plan. That I lacked the faith to write this, that by not following through on the impressions I received  I was letting down God. I wasn't doing what He needed me to do or helping whomever He needed me to reach.  And I felt I was letting myself down.  Reading other people's work and seeing their talent in writing and being able to put ideas and words in such brilliant ways made me feel extremely inadequate. I felt like I was not strong enough, or smart enough or talented enough or motivated enough to work on something like this.  

I want my blog and my story to be something worth reading. I've had this idea in my head that I need to make everything "perfect" before sending it out into the world. Nicely packaging up all my vulnerability into a nice little bow, laying it out just so before showing it to anyone. But I have come to realize that that is not what this blog is for. That is not what my story is about. For years I have tried to overcome these ideas of "perfection" these black and white, all or nothing attitudes of how my life needs to be. How I need to be. How I need to look. Hiding behind these masks of pretension. I have more often then not, gotten stuck in these narrow views. And many times I have had to learn things the hard way in order to get out of my own way. 

So yes this blog is not always going to be coherent or grammatically correct. I may be redundant and I might repeat myself (catch that? That was a joke.) My story might not always be concise or pretty or dare I say it, "Perfect." But I am embracing the fact that, neither am I. I remember being taught something from one of my Temple Workers in the Baptistry at the Timpanogos Temple when I was in high school, Sister Walker. She told me something her Stake President said during Stake Conference, "The only perfect being who ever lived was not a perfectionist." Well that's good enough for me. This blog is supposed to be about me and my story, and sometimes to get to know someone you need to see all the flaws and the raw edges. And I can promise you plenty!

I am now months behind in my perceived "deadline" but maybe there is a reason for that. One thing I know is that God works with our weaknesses and short comings. And He has plenty of Plan Bs when we fail to do what He asked to do in the first place. That is one of the many very nice things of having someone in your corner who knows the "End from the Beginning" So I'm starting again. To tell you the truth I'm not entirely sure where... I have plenty of drafts and notes and ideas and wonderful edits done by my friend Amber. Now I am just figuring out if that is the direction I need to go. But I'm jumping in with both feet. "Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it." For those of your who have taken and will take the time in the future to read these, thank you for taking this journey with me.