Pondering my flaws

Well, what to write about today? I'm doing a great job of messing things up, it seems. The older I get the more mistakes I seem to be making.


Just yesterday I put my foot in my mouth as a self-proclaimed American accent expert and then I generalised! Not the first time I've offended Americans by generalising about them and their country. Sorry to all my American readers out there.


Last week I shot off an email to the designer of the magazine I edit. It detailed changes I thought needed making in the about-to-be-sent-to-the-printer magazine. Turns out, I was out of line. In fact editing is all about finding mistakes — my own and others. And then you add more than one editor together, thrown a few writers in and you have disagreement, sometimes major disagreement! Actually, editing this magazine has probably gotten me in more hot water more frequently than anything else I've done in the last decade. Sigh.


I'm still recovering from a couple of mistakes I made in 2010 and discovered last January when I made yet another several mistakes with the same person. The mess that those mistakes made hurt me badly and isn't going away quickly.


Which leads me to another aspect to my personality that has come in focus for me again this week. My tendency to persevere. This, like most personality traits, has positive and negative sides to it.


Positively it has enabled me to stick with difficult situations longer than I might otherwise have done (for example, being a missionary in Japan). It means that I've gained competence in some things that I might not have except that I've persevered (e.g. piano). It means I don't need much external motivation. It means that goals I set, I often achieve and that if I set my mind to something, I usually manage it if I'm not thwarted by some other factor. That's why learning Japanese has been such a frustration to me, because, I didn't get the results that I, or anyone else wanted.


The negative side of perseverance is that it is hard to let go. Hard to let go of an argument, hard to accept that something hasn't been completed to my satisfaction (an element of perfectionism, I guess). Hard to accept that I cannot fix a relationship if the other person doesn't want it fixed. It is hard to accept giving up. It means that I can push my boys too far. This was particularly evident in homeschooling, but is something I have to continually try to keep in check when parenting. It means I can get stuck on something that in the big scheme of things is unimportant. Add to it my tendency to be introspective, and you can get some serious mental messes.


Sigh. Mistakes, messes, difficulty quitting. 


My boys were pondering heaven the other day. When I ponder my flaws, it makes me sad, but it also makes me long for heaven, for a time when I'll not have any flaws or internal struggles anymore.