The Perfect Christmas

    My world is obsessed with perfection. I am a teen girl who is told every day she needs to be perfect. We all "know" we can't, but we also can't help trying. We want to be accepted and we think perfection is always accepted.  So we work hard everyday to be perfect so we can belong in our ever-obsessing and overwhelming culture. Pressures reign in school, in relationships, and especially in social media. (I mean, seriously! Do you really believe she eats that healthy every night?) No one wants to see what your kitchen ACTUALLY looks like on your fifth attempt at scratch cookies!! Or that you wear sweatpants sometimes... well, basically all times. You get the point...

    But guess what?! I can't be perfect. And neither can you. But obviously, I have a very strong, almost obsessive, desire to be perfect. And I have this theory that just maybe, it has a purpose. 

    I dance. (Yes, Bonnie. We know!) Well, one thing I have come to realize is that as an artist, I spend, on average, three hours a day perfecting my art. I have an obsessive desire to be perfect technically and asthetically. Now, I could give it the power to destroy and consume me, internalizing every negative thought and mistake. OR I could use that desire to work hard and be excellent. I can even celebrate or rejoice in my dance! Not perfection, but beauty. For after all, it doesnt have to be perfect to be beautiful.

    Christmas time, I have observed, is the time when this hunger for perfection (and well hunger in general) is most prevalent. We want EVERYTHING to be perfect. Our gifts must be perfect, the food, the eve, the day! We feel disappointment or frustration when we fail to meet our own expectations or the cultures...

   But just like that's not what dancing is about, that is certainly NOT what Christmas is about!! Its a celebration of how Christ, who IS perfection, came to be with us. He took on the shame and guilt of OUR imperfection and died. That is what we are celebrating. That though I am not perfect, Jesus thinks I was worth leaving His throne, worth being born in a stable, worth dying for.