As I am on this women’s retreat with the subject being “Perfect”, the fig leaves we hold up for others not to see our nakedness. The older I get the more I have learned about myself and of others. Being a people watcher I am always amazed to watch others and see a slight glimpse of their things they hid when they feel no one is watching. However the older I get the more amazed that I still try to aim for perfection. Perfect house, perfect relationship with my spouse, perfect relationship with friends and of course last but not least….the perfect mother.
The analogy for the weekend is the fig leaf. The leaf we hold up to hide our imperfections so we appear perfect to others. I’m sure we all have them and if you think you don’t……may be time to look in the mirror and be brutally honest with yourself. I find that the more we use our fig leaves…..the more worn they get and then it gets to the point where a hole is worn in the leaf and all starts to fall apart. Our mask gets wore and the elastic band no long wraps around your face to hide our pain and tears. You feel lonely, broken and scared that all the glass balls that are held up in the air are going to fall and shatter. We live in a society that we feel no one must see us become weak and vulnerable. We are the strong society where you always hold your head high and never ever ask for help.
Recently I have been holding a beautiful bouquet of fig leaves. Some thicker than others and some quit worn to the edge of flaking away to show the truth. Some of these leaves I am not sure why they are there and others I know exactly why they are selected and what they are hiding. The moments that I realize why I feel internal pain over something that has been eating at me for some time is the moment that life becomes a bit too real for me and I don’t want to admit these new findings.
My son brought home his first report card for 4th grade. This is the year when things begin to change, classes get more challenging and there is more focus on the answers rather than the circles over a, b or c. With two D’s, two C’s and a B, I was disappointed, deflated and to say the least angry. The anger was something I couldn’t understand, where did it come from….why. Well, as I slowly remove this leaf from my bouquet I am beginning to get a glimpse of these emotions…to realize that the anger is really not anger but fear. You see as a child homework for me was a question…..”Is your homework done?”, there was no sitting down at a table and working through the problems, there was no proof reading before a report was handed in. So I didn’t get the best grades, had plenty of missed assignments and probably wrote about 5,000 sentences that “I will finish my homework”. I was not considered the smart kid and I don’t want him to feel that way amongst his peers too. I fear that I don’t know how to do homework time well enough for him. He suffers from ADHD and that makes it even harder. When the neighborhood kids have homework done in a matter of minutes, for him it takes a about an hour or two. It is emotionally draining on me and I don’t want to break his spirit by getting irritated that he doesn’t have the ambition. But would you if all your friends where outside playing and you were stuck inside working on homework? I just don’t want him to become like me. I didn’t get the good grades in school, I didn’t study, which left very little option for me when it came time for college. What was left for me was my music to hope to get me into college and that was gone after carpel tunnel set in. We all want the best for our children, we strive for that. But right now I am broken and I just need to take time to breath and figure out how to move this train forward for everyone in the family to benefit. I want school to be fun for him as he is a smart kid. I want to be able to relax enough for my two boys so they can look forward to homework time.
The hardest part of this all……..is my act of control. Here it is again, the me, myself and I. No me, my husband and God. I haven’t been giving a lot to God lately. Not sure why but I need to put things back into his hands and let him lead me instead of me trying to run ahead of the pack. I know He will guide us through this time and that we will get things figured out so things are better for him. It is also all the leaves in my bouquet that I think blind me from God. The foliage gets so thick that at times it is hard to slow down put down my leaves and leave it to God.
