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  • Writer's pictureKaty D-H

Why it’s ok to make mistakes

Death of a perfectionist


In the first lockdown we were grateful for the sunshine. Maybe this one will be all about the starlight.


Stars are the sun but far away. Starlight is sunlight but we can also see the dark around it. And somehow a background of inky darkness makes them that bit more magical.


My name is Katy. And I’m a perfectionist. I do not like making mistakes and I work very hard to avoid them. I do not like things left unfinished. I stay away from doing things if I might fail. I am rarely happy with something I make. I find it impossible to ignore other people’s negative opinions. I loathe bad days. I don’t like not feeling my best and kindest and most faithful every day. I am going for perfect. It’s exhausting.



I was sitting in the cathedral watching Sam get ordained and all I could think was, “Why is it ok if I make mistakes? Why?” Then the Bishop, Mark, made a mistake in the service. In fact he made three. The third time he must have felt nudged by God because he paused and said “We don’t have to be perfect to follow Jesus. We just have to be available.” I started crying. It’s ok to make mistakes.



I’d spent the whole day thinking about this word “hineni” which means “here I am.” Lots of the people in the Bible hear God calling them and say “Here I am.” It is a word that shows surrender and vulnerability. It means “ok, this is what I’ve got. You can have it Jesus, imperfections included.” It is a hard word. As my properly lovely friend Amy said to me the other day, sometimes it is the hardest thing just to stand. And keep standing.



At the end of the service I looked at my phone. It had a massive crack down the screen where I’d dropped it on the solid stone cathedral floor. Imperfection. A useful reminder. It’s ok to make mistakes.


But why? Why is God ok with my imperfection when I am so not okay with it?



“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine in the darkness’, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

2 Corinthians 4:6-7



I’ve spent a while looking at that first verse and this is how I imagine it...



The boy and the jam jar


The boy held the jam jar out in both his small hands. It had half a jam sticker on one side where he couldn’t scrub it off and a big chip on the other side. “It’s not a very nice jar,” he said. “And it’s not very big.”

“It’s just right,” said Jesus.


The boy didn’t like the dark. He’d spent the summer trying to find things to put in his jar to keep the darkness away, but the glow worm had died and the candle needed too much watching. Sunshine just wouldn’t be caught. The jar wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t good enough.


He held his jar to Jesus.

“It’s just right,” he said again.


The boy forgot all about the jar. Looking into the face of Jesus he saw the loveliest light yet. It was like liquid love pouring out of him. It filled the night sky around them and suddenly the darkness shrank back. He remembered unexpected fireworks filling the sky with glitter and the twinkling of Christmas lights. He remembered being held close in the cold.


The boy took a deep breath and looked back at the jar. Inside there was a tiny light. A tiny, perfect light piercing the dark. As he turned it round in his hands he noticed the light refracting through the imperfections to create tiny rainbows on his fingers. Magic.


“We don’t need a perfect jar. We just need a jar.”



I think equally the jar could have been clay and the light could have come through the cracks. That would be closer to the original but less fun to paint. But there we go, it’s not perfect...



So Jesus deposits light into us. It is the light of his lovely face. I noticed this the other day as I was talking to Amy. She wasn’t sharing any answers with me, but she’d been spending time with Jesus and somehow she was sharing what she knew about his face. She was reminding me about the patterns of Jesus and the way he likes to move and it illuminated my night. “Oh yes”, my heart said, “I remember you.” She didn’t offer me her own perfection, she offered me a glimpse of his.



But what of the mistakes? What of the chips and bumps and the ways that I worry that I’m ruining everything for myself and for Jesus and for the people I am not good enough for?


“We have this treasure in jars of clay. To show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed.”

2 Corinthians 4:8-9



Those rainbows again.



The other night Eva couldn’t sleep. She struggles with this on and off. I am not very patient most of the time. Why can’t this be easier? Why can’t she be a child who finds it easy to nod off? Have we done something wrong? Would a turbo, electric, lullaby-singing, star-projecting, lavender-mist machine sort it out? But that night I climbed up into her bunk bed and lay down next to her. She put her arm around me and curled up under me, her hair across the pillow and her long eyelashes finally resting on her cheeks.

Perhaps it’s ok to not sleep, because then you get to be held.


Perhaps it’s ok to fall because then we can be rescued. Perhaps it’s ok to fail because we get to see a miracle. Perhaps it’s ok to make mistakes, because then we get to know what it is to be loved no matter what.





Here I am God. Here I am.





katy x

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