I'm sure not everyone will be be able to relate to me on this one, but I'm going to share anyway.

I have this intense need for perfection.

It taints everything I do, everything I think, and everything I want.

If it can't be perfect, it's not good enough.

Clearly this leads to a lot of disappointment.

When I see that perfect is unattainable, my automatic response is to go the opposite direction.

Like a game of pong I go sailing quickly from one extreme side to the other.

Because if trying can't gain me perfection, then why try at all?

My need for perfection absolutely ties into things like my need to be prepared and my drive to never stop until all is completed.

The pursuit of perfect is exhausting. 

And even worse than that, it affects everyone around me.

I found myself perfectly explained in a book I read recently. I never would have put it in these words myself, but when I read them I knew it was me.

I hold myself to an impossible standard, but I hold you to it too. And I hold him to it and her to it and them to it. No one is exempt.
-Emily P. Freeman

My desire for perfect affects my expectations of everyone and everything in my life. 

And I have finally come to learn that if perfect is what I'm seeking, there will be no rest. It's just not an option.

Because I can get it all right and feel like rest is in sight, but then something beyond my control throws things off and I'm left unsatisfied. Or I can get it right and have it not messed up ninety-nine times, but if it goes wrong time one hundred, that wipes out all the satisfaction of the other successes. 

Perfect is a relentless taskmaster. One that has no room for rest.

As I consider my need for perfection, these words come to mind:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. 
C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity

(As a side-note, if you've never read that book, please do! If you can't afford to buy it, let me know and I will buy it for you!)

My need for perfection may be a result of my big bold capital type A personality.

But it just might be more than that. Because once there was perfection. And then it was gone.

And maybe the desire for perfection in our hearts is not about us as much as we think. Maybe it's to draw us to what life is really all about.

So I let go of perfect and accept that it is not meant for now. And I find rest in knowing the One who is perfect is the One who's orchestrating all of now. And one day I will be with Him. And that desire that has always plagued me will be perfectly satisfied.

I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.
Psalm 17:15