Comforter or Killer?

 A few days ago, my four-year-old granddaughter stuck a pompom up her nostril, and it got stuck. This necessitated a trip to her pediatrician, then Children’s Hospital, where after 7.5 hours and an ENT being summoned from another hospital and her being sedated, the offending pompom was removed.

My husband and I were called that evening to babysit her sisters so that she could be taken to the hospital. As the hours slipped by, and I lay sleepless on their couch in the wee hours of the morning, receiving texts on the pompom removal process, I had a lot of time to think about how we react to situations, especially ones where someone is vulnerable. As soon as my granddaughter stuck the pompom up her nose, she knew she’d done something stupid and was panicked and remorseful.

The “pompom episode” occurred during the controversial episode of Simone Biles pulling out of her Olympic gymnastics competition. It seemed that everyone in the media had an opinion on that from understanding to outright vitriol. I don’t follow Simone Biles; I know who she is, but I don’t know enough about her life to opine that she choked or had legitimate reasons for not competing. However, what I do know is that there are some people who pounce when people are down.

Fortunately, for me I come from a loving family who, whenever tragedy strikes or a catastrophe occurs or you stick a pompom up your nose, no matter how stupid you’ve been, you close ranks and support and care for each other. I assumed most people are like that.

I was wrong.

Nearly 40 years ago, my husband’s family suffered the death of someone I liked a lot. During that stressful time, a relative, whom I will call Rhonda for anonymity’s sake, and whom I thought was kind and compassionate, decided to settle an old score with the sister of the deceased, attacking her and telling the bereaved what a lout her brother was, disparaging him in a rant that led to a shouting match and others bursting into tears. All I could liken it to was a scene from the old show Wild Kingdom where a wounded animal lay crippled in the brush and a lion pounced to tear it to pieces. 

Perhaps I was naïve; I was only 23 at the time, but nevertheless, I was distraught not only because Rhonda was speaking ill of the dead when he wasn’t even buried but also because how ugly Rhonda revealed her heart to be. She was downright ugly. I never regarded her the same after.

As I lay on the couch trying to catch some sleep, I vowed that I never wanted to be that vicious to the vulnerable. I’m sure my daughter felt like lashing out when my little granddaughter stuffed the pompom up her nose, but what good would it have done?

I hope when calamity strikes that I act as a comforter to the vulnerable and not as a killer.

It’s Perfect – Not!

It was Father’s Day weekend thirty-one years ago. Married only a couple of years, my husband and I had moved into our first house that previous January. We’d spent that spring painting, wallpapering—the things you do to get a home into shape. On Saturday of that weekend, I’d cleaned the whole house while my husband had spent the day outside trimming hedges, weeding, and cutting grass in anticipation of a Father’s Day picnic for both sides of our family—the first event in our first home.

As we called it a day, I remember looking at our neatly manicured lawn and gleaming house and thinking, “Everything is perfect.”

Then the phone rang at 7:04 a.m. Who calls that early on a Sunday morning? I thought as my husband rolled over and answered it. When I saw the color drain from his face, I knew something was terribly wrong. He hung up and stared blankly at me, too stunned to show any emotion. “That was my mom. Tommy’s been killed in a motorcycle accident.” Tommy was his twenty-three-year-old little brother.

We’d anticipated a Father’s Day picnic filled with fun and laughter. Instead, we were now faced with death, identifying a body at the morgue, and making funeral arrangements.

So much for perfection.

Flash forward to June seven years later. I’m sitting in a counselor’s office after suffering for months with panic attacks. “From what I’ve observed,” the kind therapist said, “You are very hard on yourself. You need to allow yourself to be human. You think you have to be perfect.”

As you can see, my dance with perfection has been filled with missteps. From Tommy’s death, I learned that life is not perfect and never will be, and through my joust with anxiety, I learned that I am not perfect and never will be.

So, how does someone who’s had these types of reality checks with perfection square them with Jesus’s words in Matthew’s Gospel where He instructs us to “Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

To a perfectionist, His words area a recipe for disaster. You may have heard the adage “Perfection is the enemy of the good.” Well, when we perfectionists get rolling, we tend to discount anything, however good, that does not meet our level of perfection. We get tangled up in being immaculate. I’ve worked hard not to be a perfectionist, so when I came across that bit of scripture again recently, I, once again, reacted to it with disregard and confusion—not a good way to react to scripture.

I know perfection is impossible and shouldn’t even be pursued lest I become paralyzed in my quest to be flawless. There is no perfection on this side of eternity. I know I cannot be perfect, I made myself sick trying. Why would Jesus impose such an impossible directive on those He loves?

Ah, but I’ve also come to learn that when Jesus commands us to do something, He always promises to provide us with the grace to achieve it. His words in John’s Gospel provide the key. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Apart from Him, I cannot reach perfection. Apart from Him, the world wallows in sin and destruction. Perfection in the way Jesus means is a work of transformation and something for me not to achieve but to surrender to. Through Jesus and His act of redemption, we reach perfection. Paul in his letter to Philippians gives us this assurance: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

I’ve learned that Jesus is working on me, and that sounds absolutely perfect to me.

(This originally appeared on the Catholic Writers Guild Blog.)