F #2 and #3: Fake and Flawed

F #2: I Was Fake
Proverbs 3:5, 6 pops up again. I trusted me for my walk as a First Lady. I clothed my Donna persona with an image of confidence and self-assurance. But, away from the ministry limelight, in the deep shadows of my life, I was quivering bundle of doubt, anxiety and fear. What if someone discovered that I was not all I seemed to be, that I was just as human and subject to the failures of humanity as they were? What if it were found out that I was just projecting an image of piety, that my relationship with God was more form than substance? A national bible study teacher, Beth Moore, says that anxiety is a result of our wanting to be in control; I definitely wanted to control how others perceived me, so I faked it!

I remember a mini-conference in my hometown, a series of which the State Convention President was holding to get better acquainted with the local associations. I had been asked to assist at the offering table and I made sure that everything about my appearance was, well, perfect. I made a short but eloquent talk to encourage giving (again, from my perspective). Smug and satisfied with Lady Donna, I sat down next to the President. I had known this man and his wife for years and I greatly admired both of them for their work in the ministry. I had only sat there for a few minutes when he turned to me and asked, “Well, Donna, what are your doing? A little studying, a little praying?” I was doing neither at that time. I was faking my way through ministry, confident in my church work thesis, that the works I did would speak for me. I do not remember how I responded to this pastor’s query, but I do remember what I felt. I felt the façade of my pretense crumble as that pastor seemed to look into my soul to see the emptiness, the void I was trying to fill with myself. As my late pastor/husband so succinctly labeled it in one of his sermons, I was “dressed up on the outside and messed up on the inside.” I was Fake.

F #3: I Was Flawed
There is an old gospel song that contains this line: “I may never reach perfection, but Lord I’ve tried.” The church girl in me took that song to heart, that church work was paramount and boy, did I try. And since I could not stand being imperfect, I became a perfectionist.

Pefectionism
Refusal to accept any standard short of perfection
Philosophy: A doctrine holding that religious . . . perfection is attainable, especially the theory that human moral or spiritual perfection should be or has been attained.

Are you kidding me? Was I really so foolish as to believe I could reach perfection? YES I WAS! And because I was flawed and I was so determined not give any appearance of flaw or imperfection that Donna the perfectionist became the self-appointed critic of the flaws I observed in others, a way of proclaiming myself as "not as bad as" or "better than." This is a flaw of the perfectionist's psyche, the determination to hold every other person’s feet to the fire of that perfectionist’s exacting standards. For example, I would tune out a speaker or preacher who used incorrect grammar in a talk or a sermon, irregardless of the biblical content and context. I would critique the teaching method and style of a bible class instructor or facilitator, silently comparing their pitiful effort to how much better I could “perform” in their place without a thought as to the biblical principals and concepts I could learn.

Yet, in spite of my determined effort to overcome my flaws, my melancholy temperament lent itself to scab picking. I am not trying to gross you out, dear reader, but I was a scab picker, I spent a lot of time taking out my imperfections to mourn over them. I would hold them up to the light of how other women looked and what other first ladies did and I always, always, came out dead last. I was a perfectionist who was also a pessimist, so I was never good enough even as I stalked perfection. My glass was always half empty; my life was always a mess, and I knew how to sing the blues loud and long. My perfectionism drove the church girl in me, but my pessimism always put the brakes on any progress I thought I made by raising the question, “What’s the point and why bother?” In my foolishness and my fake-ness, I cloaked my flaws with a perfectionism that I undermined with pessimism. All of which ran a poor second to the good work God could do in me if I just got my Fake and Flawed self out of the way.