Why Perfect?

I’m trying to catch up on blogs for this week b/c I only posted one on Tuesday and just ignored all the other days. I’m not the kind of person who can not do homework and its been bothering me all week that I didn’t blog so I decided to post a couple today so I wouldn’t be feeling guilty anymore. I think there might be something wrong with me because I don’t see why I should feel so weird about not posting blogs this week, I mean I had a lot of other assignments to do and I didn’t get to sleep before two this whole week. I have been pretty much surviving on chocolate and coffee so I’m an absolute wreck. Both Sam and I were feeling sick this week but because I was less sick than him I went to classes Thursday and he went to classes Friday because he got to sleep in on Thursday. Now that I think about it, I don’t understand why we both were unable to just sleep in both days. When we talked about what we were going to do about being sick and missing classes we just took it for granted that one of us would have to go to each class, we couldn’t both miss (we have most of our classes together so that’s why we were even discussing this in the first place). It probably would not have hurt us very much to just miss class once, I mean even if we didn’t know what happened in class for one day it couldn’t lower our grades very much. I’m trying to figure out why Sam and I freak out about grades so much. Neither of us had pressure put on us by parents to make good grades but we always feel like we have to do all assignments perfectly. That seems really strange to me right now, I don’t even remember when I started to freak out about school so much but its come to the point where it’s impossible for me to do anything less than my best. That’s not to say that I always complete assignments to the best of my abilities but if I don’t do something perfectly it really really bothers me. I know Sam is the same way because neither of us was very happy with our textual analysis essays and we keep saying things about them like “Oh I just thought of what I should have said in this paragraph…” and so on. Why on earth can’t we just let things go? Why do we feel like we have to be perfect all the time?

I’ve decided to blame our high school, ECS, for our OCD problems. ECS ingrains in its students that you should do everything to the best of your abilities because that is what glorifies God and that is what will get you into a good college where you can get an excellent job and then glorify God even more. I agree that God desires my best and that in order to honor Him in all that I do I should do my school work well because at this time in my life this is what God wants me to do. I don’t think that it glorifies God to be obsessive about school work because when I’m freaking out about my work I’m not thinking that God will be dishonored by a poorly written essay. Also, I don’t think God cares at all if i get a prestigous, well-paying of job, I mean it’s not even up to me where I work because I am going to follow God’s plans for my life even if it means staying in Memphis and being a teacher or spreading His truth in Russia (by the way, I don’t want to do either of those things) , it’s up to Him to decide. Worrying about my grades seems selfish to me, I think that if I am going to do something to the best of my abilities it should be something for others because I think that would glorify God much more. Anyway, I think that ECS has it all wrong, God isn’t glorified when I’m perfect, He is glorified when I follow Him and do His will with the abilities that He has given me. I’m going to try to relax more about school and maybe I’ll be able to more clearly see God’s plan for my life.