Mistakes

I stepped back from the wall and looked at the pictures that I had just hung.

Ugh. This one was too high. That one was to close. It was a mistake to eyeball it. I should have measured. I should have taken more time so it would be perfect.

“Welcome to the world of random honey. No one will notice it’s not right, but you.”

All day long, all life long really, is filled with these seemingly little mistakes.

Not stepping back far enough so refrigerator door hits my hand spilling milk.
Telling the kids about something we’re going to do before it happens (something always messes it up!)
Not bringing the toddlers cup to church.
Hitting the snooze button, twice.

All of these things in my mind are mistakes. A failing to do what is planned or right or should be done. I’m learning to let them go. To learn to that mistakes are part of life and moving on to the next thing instead of dwelling on the mistake.

Lessons are learned through the mistakes in life. Without error and hardship there is no learning, there is no growth. So I embrace, or in reality shrug off, try to ignore, the little imperfections and mistakes. For it’s more important to finally have the beautiful family photos on our empty walls, imperfect as they hang, than to have forever empty walls.

Perfection can paralyze. Learning to accept imperfection allows us to move forward and keep learning and trying and growing.




This is a prompt from Alice Bradley’s the The Practice of Writing. I failed to keep up with the class in real time. I’m accepting that it’s a failure of time management and not a failure of character and picking back up and moving froward.